Raimo Reinikainen is one of Finland’s finest and most original visual artists. His works address deep philosophical and ethical issues and are able to give these deliberations singular and touching visual form.
In about a year’s time Galerie Anhava will have the pleasure of staging a major showing of Raimo Reinikainen’s works that will fill the whole gallery. Now as a kind of prologue, the Studio of Galerie Anhava is featuring an exhibition of works from “The Sweet Cloud of the Dream”, a series of drawings of a surrealistic type made by Reinikainen in 1967-68.
In an essay entitled ”Merimaisemani” ( My seascape), published in the art magazine Taide in 1968, Raimo Reinikainen wrote the following about drawing and the line:
”The straight line is constructive, and one does not have to go too far to make it even pretentious in its own straightforward style. Yet the line is no wayward entity; its essence is rather that of a singular point, in a way like the halves of an accordion at the extreme position from each other. The straight line – a counter-accordion to the winding route! A twisting line can be ornamental, or perhaps intoxicated by the joy of running around trees or along the tops of waves. In my work, I use both positions of the line: distinct philistinism and obstinacy as well as intoxicated joy, which, as far as it is concerned and to a minor part, is laxity. Despite their important status, the many positions of these lines are secondary factors, dolls dressed in servants’ uniforms; and this will be the fate of civil servants! In his own work, the artist is the leader – in a creative area that is broad in a strangely restricted way. He (the artist) dictates how things are crossed or whether any crosses are marked at all. Art is a dream that does not come true, that comes true; both roadsides are the countless opportunities of art, variations like grains of sand blown before the wind.”