Collection: Jukka Rusanen

"Jukka Rusanen, born in Jyväskylä in 1980, studied fine arts at the Turku School of Fine Arts and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Today he lives and works in Finland's seventh largest city, Lahti. The artist's works are part of all of Finland's top museum collections, including the Finnish State Art Collection, the Helsinki Art Museum and the Contemporary Art Museum KIASMA. Since the gallery was founded, Jukka Rusanen has been represented in Germany and Switzerland by Lachenmann Art in close cooperation.

The substrates of his works are often works of art history that are important, whose depth and spatiality Jukka Rusanen deconstructs and creates in a genuinely new way. In his work Poetic (Split), the artist begins from scratch: soft, changeable silk meets a stable, rigid frame; the flawlessly smooth surface of the canvas is divided by a merciless slit - Jukka Rusanen unites through art what is thought of as separate: masculinity and femininity, history and the present. Homogeneous in absolute difference, harmonious in the relationship of extreme diversity, associative contradictions.

In his art - as in almost all creation stories - difference is created, the reunifying, dancing battle of which plays out dramatically before our eyes. In the painting Thinker, color becomes the motif, the gesture, the material. "A painting is an experience of spatiality and a crystallization of spatiality in the moment it becomes visible," says the artist, thereby mediating between the material color and its function, the depiction." — Theresa Brauer, 2017

"Light and dark. Light and shadow. Black and white. These opponents duel on the canvas. Here, sooty, black streaks of mist form the background. The delicate brushwork lends the darkness a lightness, their traces make their way in all directions and seem to push beyond the canvas boundaries. In the center of the picture is a single explosion of dynamic lines. Structurally, the foreground and background are in strong contrast to each other. The two opposite poles fight for dominance in the picture - black caresses the white, penetrates it, mixes, steals its purity: shades of gray emerge. Their encounter is loud and rich in contrast, but also poetic and loving. A mystical dance to a dark beat. A fight for survival or an act of love. A frozen expression of a state of mind that captivates the viewer and releases numerous associations. Figurative features manifest themselves and dissolve again. What is captured here is the fleeting moment in which the tension inherent in the picture reaches its zenith. Jukka Rusanen succeeds brilliantly in bringing us closer to this precious moment." — Christina Wigger, 2015

"Delicate brutality radiates towards the viewer. Pastel, feminine colours and strong, masculine gestures form a harmonious composition. A powerful arrangement in which forms wind out from a centred pivot point and work in different directions. The way the work is made is always visible, the artist's finger marks leave streaks on the canvas. This reinforces the immediacy of the work, it is direct, close and personal. Pink becomes flesh-coloured, the forms become physical. Incompleteness and vulnerability are paired with expressiveness and power, through lovely colours and energetic style. Jukka Rusanen's work lets the viewer get close, it not only reveals its creation process, but also bitterly shows the divergence between violence and fragility. No one can escape this directness." — Christina Wigger, 2015