There is no man or handprint in the untouched, paradise-like nature of the paintings. However, in some of the works, Ala-Maunus adds the painful runoff of the illusion, the unpainted surface and the color areas that blatantly stand out from the whole, with the forces of nature and dramatic surface shapes receiving the main attention. The übernatur (supernatural) captured by the artist in his works refers to an imaginary landscape before or after the sphere of human influence, either at the very beginning of time or near the last destruction.
Visual inspiration for the landscapes of Lower Maunus has been provided by 19th-century German and North American landscape painting, as well as diverse sources of popular culture from record cover art typical of metal music to New Age-inspired utopia illustrations.
In addition to the artist’s latest production, the exhibition includes works from public collections and private homes dating back about ten years. The exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Salo Art Museum.
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Petri Ala-Maunus is currently one of the most famous Finnish painters. His works are in several art collections in Finland and abroad. He is also the first surviving artist to present his work in the classic hall of the Ateneum when Eero Järnefelt’s Kaski (1893) left to tour Finland in 2017. In his work Vaara-Suomi (2017), Ala-Maunus envisions what the landscape of Kaske will look like in a thousand years.
In connection with the exhibition, a richly illustrated publication of over 100 pages is available from Petri Ala-Maunus, edited by the Salo Art Museum and the Jyväskylä Art Museum.
