Tuomas Hallivuo There's Always Spring IV
November 30th, 2018 – January 20th, 2019
My exhibition is composed of work made in 2017 and 2018. Rather than adhering to any specific theme, this exhibition is a kind of overview of what I have been doing recently. I have included samples of work from almost all of the fields I work in. The only exception is relief printing which I chose to leave out of this exhibition. My paintings are so big and they take up a lot of wall space, so instead of including my woodcuts, I decided to include mediums that I have not shown as often, such as sculpture and sound. The sound piece was made by Harri Rauhaniemi and Roope Niemelä. According to Rauhaniemi, the sound-art sounds like my work.
The most recent work shown in this exhibition was made at the Art Centre Haihatus in June where I had a large studio space. It enabled me to concentrate exclusively on painting. I had twenty metres of paper, acrylic paints and a great big paintbrush. I painted things that came to mind as I worked – one thing led to another. I often paint in surfaces or lines, some of them I paint over and that again leads to something else until I end up with something that I like and can accept.
Diary-like pen and ink drawing has been a part of my production since I was a teenager. I have rarely included these pieces in my exhibitions, but now I wanted to show the most recent of these made between July and August 2018. To me, ink drawings are like visual writing. The journal drawings deal, somewhat humorously, with very personal things and global phenomena.
For over ten years I have worked in intaglio printmaking using etching and aquatint technics. Sometimes I use drypoint, but mainly for finishing, and I have combined carborundum techniques in my etchings, as well. Two years ago I tried drypoint in a slightly different way, using it over a more regular surface joining lines where necessary. The result was pleasing enough that I ventured onto a larger plate and started to scratch in the image of a great black building. Covering large black areas with drypoint felt like too much work, so I tried to make the black areas with mezzotint. The end result looked good and after that I stopped using etching techniques in my intaglio prints. I got carried away by the technique as they say.
Tuomas Hallivuo