CANDIDATE 2003

Thomas Nyqvist

born 1955 Tolkkinen, lives in Helsinki

The starting point for Nyqvist’s dark landscapes is often a real place. This may be a view of "somewhere around the corner", whose recognisability the painting itself seeks to defamiliarise with its use of colour. His large paintings are tinged by browns and strips of snow framed by gingery zones. Nevertheless, in his most recent small paintings Nyqvist has made a systematic attempt to cut down the colour. Thus, the landscapes have become more graphic and mistily transparent; at the same time, the importance of unrecognisability has, if anything, increased. The unrecognisability of the everyday landscape in the dark, the transformation of the commonplace into a riddle, is produced by the use of colour. Darkness, fog and the anonymity of the pictured structures and objects in Nyqvist’s landscapes create the spirit of a dark place, which the misty white comfortingly clarifies. The standpoint is deliberately melancholic.

An icy chill and the soft emergence of shapes meet on Nyqvist’s canvases. His landscapes are illuminated by a coolly soft oxymoron.

The objects depicted in places, such as in his latest battle-trench painting, create an image of abandoned strata and concealed memories. Thomas Nyqvist’s applies layers of paint thinly, the colours gleaming through one another. The misty white is arranged like a cobweb on the fabric of the canvas. Thus, a fascinating contradiction is produced between the soft boulder-like shapes and limpid toning. The "nature" that has stiffened and died on the spot is undeniably a sublime factor here, one that tempts the viewer into a barely identified melancholy.

Altti Kuusamo