Erika Adamsson – Nostalgia

Adamsson is interested in the illusion of the past. The artwork often features a person in a space, the models are found in authentic photographs, contemporary drama guides, or still images of a film. Just as memories fade from the past, the paintings are not documentary descriptions of a moment in history, but instead are colored and constructed. Even when staged, the atmosphere of the painting is what we experience as authentic and believable. Nostalgia is an escape from everyday life, like a moment’s delay of a lonely visitor in a museum salon, where one can sink into the past and identify with the lives of the previous residents of the house. The abundance of details in the design of the interiors and the old style furniture define the past.

The painting technique in all the works is oil paint on an aluminum plate. Aluminum allows the paint to slide on the surface of the work, where the hand and brush do not brake. The fast painting phase is preceded by a slow work phase, where the artist delimits the painting surface meticulously. The slow work phase produces a unified and synchronous movement of the hand and thought on the surface of the painting – choosing the right color alignments. In the finished painting, the silvery aluminum surface gleams in the presence of paint.

Turku-based painter Erika Adamsson lives and works in her hometown, where she has also studied. She graduated from the Turku School of Drawing in 1996 and currently teaches painting at the same school. Adamsson had numerous solo exhibitions in Finland, the most recent one at Forum Box, Helsinki in 2019 and Laukko Mansion in 2021. The artist was awarded the William Thuring Prize of the Finnish Art Association in 2018. This exhibition is Erika Adamsson’s first appearance in Vaasa and it is produced by Vaasa City Museums. The exhibition is curated by chief of exhibitions Maaria Salo.