Veikko Törmänen, Contrast
Paintings and Installations in
Oulu City Art Museum
March 8th – May 30th, 1999

Veikko Törmänen is a painter and a graphic artist who lives in Oulu Finland. His exhibition in Oulu City Art Museum is focused on the artist’s production from the 1990’s, but the earliest works are from the beginning of the 1980’s. The main exhibition hall downstairs the Art Museum is dominated by Törmänen’s latest works that combine different painting techniques and materials. One of these is a large-sized installation which is placed on the floor, titled Kutsu, The Invitation, in which an artists’ table is gradually being transformed into verdant grass. In connection with the exhibition, it is also possible to see close up – card tricks, that Törmänen performs on a video tape.

Veikko Törmänen, who was born in 1945 in Kuusamo, held his first private exhibition in 1972. The earliest entity in the present exhibition is a group of gouache and water colour works that are based on a close study of objects. The "portraits" of tools and abandoned objects are still connected with the Realism of the 1970’s in their subject-matter. By the mid-1980’s, Törmänen had lost his interest in depicting objects in a Realistic manner, while he was becoming increasingly drawn to abstract expression.

During the years 1987-90 Törmänen concentrated on developing a concrete way of using forms: canvases with an emphasis on structured colour-planes were born - the unaffected events taking place were placed along the borders of the paintings. In the beginning of the 1990’s, the artist found that he had come to a certain kind of final point in the act of simplifying. As a result of this, objects came back to Törmänen’s works, but this time for real, in a concrete way. The clarity of the form in painting was broken by different experiments in materials and collages of various objects. Törmänen used e.g. rubber, foam-rubber, tulle, electric wire, twigs and hard board with holes in it as elements of his works.

From 1995 till the present day, Veikko Törmänen has been fascinated by the shape of a point, which signifies simultaneously both movement and stillness. The artist uses points either as an even and regular field, or as a single element with different variations. The contrast between clear openness and compact, charged action interests the artist. In these works of art, contrasts that affect are: temporariness and continuance; a sense of a pattern and an element of a surprise; nature and technology; peace and disturbance; breaking and gathering.

In his latest works, Veikko Törmänen has utilized the qualities of industrial alkyd paints, e.g. their range of glosses. Though the painting technique is compact and even tough, the process of painting is seeking to attain a relaxed quality.

Public orders have kept Veikko Törmänen occupied in the 1990´s. Designing the guest room of Oulu Provincial State Office was an exceptional project: in addition to the collage work of art placed on the wall of the guest room, Törmänen composed the total visual outlook of the interior with the furniture. In addition to that, the wall painting in the chancel of Oulu Cathedral was completed in the beginning of 1997.

For further information please contact:
Art Museum Curator Elina Vieru,
Oulu City Art Museum tel. (08) 558 47 454

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