CANDIDATE 2003
Irma Laukkanen
Born 1958 in Kotka, lives in Kotka
When a sculpture that is visibly constructed out of solid matter deals with transience, reflections or immateriality, we might think that we are talking about an impossibility or about paradoxes. In the works of the Kotka sculptor Irma Laukkanen these themes have, nevertheless, acquired credible form. Her materials have included glass, steel mesh, sheet copper and painted silk cloth. The shapes of the works are precise, thought through with a refined aesthetic eye, and always designed for the specific display situation.
Multiple layers, chain-like sculptural features and transparency are all crucial to Laukkanen’s art. The spatial thinking and three-dimensionality came in already in her time as a student, on the painting course at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1977-81. In the academic year 1981-82 she attended the sculpture course.
Laukkanen’s first public sculpture, Aurinkosade (Sun Rain), made out of sheet glass and bronze wire for the main library in Vantaa, was completed in 1985. Her most recent public work is Seittien metsä (The Cobweb Forest), a sculpture for the Finnish Embassy in Berlin, onto whose sheet glass the artist has sand-blasted layers of branches. In between these works there has been room for a varied output: numerous public works, solo exhibitions and participation in invitation exhibitions and group shows.
Light and the viewer’s movements play an essential part in Laukkanen’s sculptures: the viewer becomes a part of the work, since the metal and glass surfaces that are awakened to life in the light are reflective. The glass appears light and transparent, but also coldly cutting, fragile and impenetrable. It combines and divides at the same time, and keeps us on a knife edge. The ambiguous titles of Irma Laukkanen’s works and their atmosphere that leaves room for the viewer’s own sensations allows them to be tuned to give rise to very subtle personal experience.
Irma Laukkanen was also a candidate for the Ars Fennica award in 1997.
Satu Itkonen