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.
The exhibition shown a year ago in the gallery studio as a kind of prologue consisted of drawings of a surrealist nature made by Raimo Reinikainen in 1967-1968 for a series of works entitled "Unen makea pilvi" (Sweet Cloud of Sleep). The works of the present exhibition are pencil and coloured-pencil drawings, watercolours and pastels. The themes are taken from nature, cultural history and even literature, landscapes; the River of Death of the Kalevala epic, and works based on Chinese poems translated into Finnish by Pertti Nieminen.
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."
