Lampenius works in series and her new set of works is a continuation of her previous solo exhibitions, with wavelength vibrations again present in the paintings. In painting in wavelengths she has found her own language and symbolism based on science – a way of conveying the experience of nature and our deep-seated relationship with it.
Lampenius’ works occupy the middle ground between figurative and abstract. The themes of memory and time dealt with in her previous production are taken deeper in the Earthbound exhibition. On this occasion, she delves into our archaic, collective memory and into deep time, which is felt as a slow movement in the Earth’s sediments and in the irregular surfaces of rocks.
By wiping and washing away, simplifying layer by layer, Lampenius passes through her own experience into a shared one, and on into the viewer’s private perceptions. In these works we feel rather than see places, natural phenomena and familiar sensations that cannot be put into words. In the On the Beach series, which depicts the meeting of land and sea, every viewer can find a familiar sensation of shore and water, everyone can identify with the experience of darkness in the works in the Black Rainbow series. The figures of owls are a theme running through the exhibition and serve, as it were, as message bearers across the interfaces that recur in the works – between the here and now and the beyond, between land and sea, between humankind and nature. “We inevitably bring our own memory images to a painting and construct a new memory image out of the work, a meaning for the present moment. In a painting we can utilize recognizability or attempt to obliterate it. For me this is an interesting property of painting,” Lampenius says.
Heidi Lampenius (b. 1977) graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2011. She has subsequently participated in numerous group exhibitions in Finland and internationally, e.g. in Sweden, France, Italy, Singapore, Greece and Iceland. Lampenius’ works are represented in such public collections as Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Aine Art Museum, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation Collection and the Swedish Region Gävleborg’s public art collection.
