LARS HOLMSTRÖM, visual artist
SYSTEM AND DEVITATION
The art of Lars Holmström is investigative by nature. It appeals to perception more than to emotion. Artworks are highly materialistic, the relief paintings in particular, which are tangible objects in real space. The works hold the gaze of a viewer without leading it elsewhere. The essential elements are colours and forms, which form the basis of an artwork, and are infinitely enticing to Holmström. The study of them forms the logical, methodical foundation of his art.
Holmström´s recent body of works has included paintings and prints as well as public works related to large-scale construction projects. His constructivism is particularly suitable in those. Digital graphics utilizing photography has brought a more unconstrained touch into his pictures. There are several subcategories to digital graphics ranging from computer generated graphics to prints made of pictures scanned from real objects. Judging from the spectrum of his methods Holmström seems to have examined nearly all the options this tool has to offer.
Using photography also means that figurative elements are carried into Holmström´s works, which is otherwise uncharacteristic to his abstract art. Digital image is often the main subject matter of the work, although it is used mainly as a structural element, not as an image itself. The prints in the Mysterion series are based on geometric forms found in stone floor paving. Holmström allows the irregularity of it to guide him also in colour design as he puts to use the imprints on worn-out stones. In the end, however, he reverts the figurative elements to visual beings, which, estranged, serve first and foremost the overall visual orchestration. Even the use of abundant materials results in a controlled whole.
Occasional viewer may notice the beauty of the surface and construction as such, while a more attentive observer may also detect various systems, deviations and planes one within the other. They are pictorial epiphanies, consequences of deliberate work processes refined into a technique in the hands of a professional artist. But there is also a strong intuitive side in these processes. Holmström talks about source images, visual starting points, which gradually generate into actual works. These starting points are very likely some sort of movements in consciousness, observations before the subject is conceptualized. Maybe they are born while looking at life through art. In any case, they put forward the process of form-giving, which does not necessarily stop at the finished work, but continue its flow in the mind of a viewer.
One feels that this is exactly what it´s supposed to be.
Tapio Suominen
Tampere Art Museum, Tampere, Finland
Chief Curator