Pertti Lohiniva

Basic information

b. 1958, Rovaniemi
Visual Artist
Residence: Rovaniemi

Contact information

Artist’s Statement

Pertti Lohiniva, born 1958, is a painter from Rovaniemi. Before returning to Lapland a few years ago he had spent most of his life elsewhere. Although Lohiniva is, or says he is, an oil painter, he actually combines photographs and various other materials in his works.

Pertti Lohiniva focuses on time. For him, the main issue is not history as such, but the changing force of time – whether things exist for a wink of an eye or a thousand years. Material painting and spontaneous picturesqueness create an essence to time and space. Lohiniva wishes that people can enter his works, so to speak, and move along with the elements at various levels.

Some of his works are totally non-representational; some are combinations of photographs, multimedia, and everything else. The used technique is not an end in itself; its purpose is to enable an outcome. According to Lohiniva, a work has to entail a story that unfolds to each spectator in a unique manner. There is no single truth; the treasure lies in a multitude of truths.

His works also deal with people; men and women. This topic resurfaced during several years of teaching nude model painting. Lohiniva realized then how much a naked human body can tell about life, the contradiction between goals and actual events.

Through his work he addresses our primary need – being close to another person. Nudeness is not an end in itself; it is a prerequisite for learning about the subject without superficial or external meanings
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Bio

Pertti Lohiniva is one of the most significant artists with long career in Lapland. The basis of the recent art works is a question of whether the landscape is experienced or seen. Lohiniva doesn’t consciously observe the landscape but concentrates on the emotions it generates. One cannot find a realistic landscape in his artworks, but merely a suggestion of it - images, atmosphere, and hues. The strongly abstract paintings are mindscapes that come and go like the changing weather. The thick and the thinner, breathing layers of colour form the picturesque surface. The artworks are abstract landscapes without an attachment to the tradition of landscape painting.

 

In his artworks Lohiniva processes something that is familiar and present to everyone, yet still an abstract topic: time. The history in itself is not important though, but the force of change in time. It can be a momentarily event or the passing of thousand years. Time always leaves a mark on everyone. Sometimes Lohiniva portrays the mark of time by washing and rubbing a thick layer of colour until it appears thin and fragile, worn out by time. Sometimes the mark is like something ribbed or hewn from the stone. Next to time, the space is an important element. One can step inside the artworks and move in both time and the different levels of space. Every artwork has a story, but the artist wants the viewers to find their own truth from them.

 

COLLECTED WORKS e.g.

Finland’s Society of Arts, Aine Art Museum, K.H. Renlund Art Museum,Keuruu Art Museum, Kemi Art Museum, Pori Art Museum, Industrial Art Museum, Theatre Museum, Rauma Art Museum, Rovaniemi Art Museum, Jenny and Antti Wihuri foundation

AWARDS

Ars Arctica 1988

MEMBERSHIPS e.g.

Finnish Painters ‘Union