Opening: 11.03 - 16 - 20h
11.03 - 01.04.2023
Thu, Fri and Sat 14.00 - 18.00
Tempting as it might be at first sight, it would be missing the point to relate Krista Autio’s work directly to abstract expressionism, hard-edge painting or Mark Rothko’s colour field works. There are at least two main reasons for that. One lies in history, the time that has passed since modernism, the changes of historical context and of discourse that have taken place since those days and today, the (post-historical? see below) moment in which Autio lives and creates her work. The other main reason why we should not reduce her work, merely on formal grounds, to a kind of nostalgic (or expectant) return to modernism is in her character and the resulting evolution of her oeuvre. A consistent next stage is what we see in this exhibition.
Having said that, I am still led to reference Rothko for one single idea: the importance of size. For the simple reason that what Autio does in terms of dimension is what Rothko called providing sufficient space for the viewer to experience, reflect, immerse (and, of course, implied in that, space for the artist for expression). Her large canvases with strong monochrome fields and strips of colour create that space – even when she makes small monochrome pieces, she arranges them in patterns that add up to one large unit.
By doing so, we shift to the spatial spectrum of time-space, liberating us from the temporality of associations and references. Meanwhile, “liberating us” of that kind of temporality does not mean eliminating temporal, historical references. The liberation comes in the form of opening up the space for dualities or seeming contradictions (historical and timeless; symbolic and concrete; emptying out and filling up; chronological and synchronous; personal and impersonal; archetypal and political; etc.) – to be true and relevant at the same time, one not cancelling or neutralizing the other but probably even reinforcing one another in her expression and our experience. All this is carried to a next level by the titles. When a free flow of fields of hues starting and finishing arbitrarily, in patterns whose rules are dictated by an inherent rhythm, are given names of persons, with a wink, Autio tricks us into the illusion of pseudo-concreteness spiced with a bit of humour too. (Yes, humour and seriousness, tragedy and comedy are also to be added to the list of dualities above.)
When I started to learn the piano, all we did in the first class with my teacher was hit key after key with me having to say what colour appeared before my closed eyes. In a way, Autio does the opposite: she gives us the colour, the pattern, the space, and we, together with her, share an experience. The extent of that sharing is up to as many personal and impersonal factors as we are disposed to at any given moment.
This is also what allows her to respond most naturally, concretely and authentically to the moment in history when, all of a sudden, she strikes us with a field of blue on top of one of yellow...
Zsolt Kozma
