Riitta Nelimarkka’s exhibition Hassuna (engl. “As funny”) was showcased in an old stone barn at Art Pappila in Sastamala, Finland, during the summer of 2022.
The exhibition’s name, Hassuna, referred to an ancient city in Mesopotamia (circa 6000 BCE). The name also captured the spirit of the enchantingly color–rich exhibition. “The more dire the state of life and the world in general, the more important it is to find joy. Otherwise, we face spiritual ruin,” Nelimarkka summarizes.
Art critic and non–fiction author Timo Valjakka gave the opening speech for the exhibition, where he, among other things, analyzed Riitta’s working methods and talked about her sources of inspiration and connections to art history.
“– – Riitta Nelimarkka’s drawings remind me of an often–told anecdote about Wassily Kandisky. According to this story, the birth of the whole of abstract art can be traced back to a painting that he put on his easel upside down, and to the insight that this sparked off about seeing painting in another way.
Here, I am particularly thinking of Nelimarkka’s Babylonia series from a few years ago: drawings made using black charcoal and pastel pencils in rapidly made marks applied directly to their white paper foundation – to the “original sheet” as she herself calls this white void. Like the Improvisations (which the Babylonia series remotely resembles) that Kandinsky began soon after having this insight, in Nelimarkka’s drawings many levels of looking are present simultaneously.
– – Art never emerges out of nothing. Behind every picture there are always not only personal experiences, but also other pictures. Nelimarkka talks about her early trips to the museums of continental Europe, and she has fond memories of the masters of Modernism, from Henri Matisse to Joan Miró. Nevertheless, at the top of the list she puts Henry Moore.
Despite the profusion of influences, one very personal one seems to endure: “My father would never succumb to wearing black shoes,” Riitta Nelimarkka says. “He was constantly reminding me about the diversity of the world. So why should I follow in existing footsteps?”
Nelimarkka’s art is cheerful and sunny, in fact sunnier than we know life actually to be. A closer look does reveal darker tones and fractured furrows beneath the brightly coloured surfaces. ‘I am an idealist, and I don’t want to give in,’ Nelimarkka says. Pain exists, but you don’t have to work on everything through pain.“