Mercy | Jukka Rusanen

Jukka Rusanen's canvas works come to life through pastel tones and an unmistakable style, through which the artist's hand is inscribed in the work almost effortlessly. Partially pastose elements are contrasted with powdery colors and refer back to the Rococo period, from which the artist draws his inspiration. The moment of pure materiality on the canvas is always contrasted with the moments of haptic formation and materializes into figurativeness when viewed. An almost inexplicable tension between calm, monotonous surfaces and wildly expressive traces of color defines the artist's works and increases in a crescendo of delicate lightness and thunderous brutality.

The Finnish artist Jukka Rusanen (*1980) inspires with his refreshing view of the world. Jukka Rusanen is an artist in whose cosmos of images two spheres are cleverly merged:
The subtle color and the confident line. The drawing and the painting. Here, the two do not stand side by side or even in competition, as with other artists, but the color and the gesture interact with each other, becoming one. The trace is articulated in the color, merges and yet remains clearly recognizable in its own right. Similar to the instrumentation of an orchestral piece, this painting has something grandiosely symphonic. At the same time, it comes across as full of lightness, completely unemotional, and that is exactly what makes Jukka Rusanen's art so appealing and likeable. Smetana improvisations, played on the Rococo spinet.

Whoever looks at these pictures is close to themselves, is completely at one with themselves. And yet we as viewers enjoy it when we are allowed to decipher something behind the shimmering traces of color that leads us back into the world and yet immediately takes us away again, knowing: This is pure painting that refers above all to one thing, namely to its own means, to itself. Art as if made by nature, and yet: art.— Prof. Dr. Martin Oswald, 2022

More works by Jukka Rusanen