COPENHAGEN.- In the exhibition 'Smoke on paper' Päivi Takala shows a series of oil paintings on canvas, all measuring 75 x 65 cm. The paintings form a straight line on the wall, like a visual train of thought.

The immediate order of the mounting is, however, disrupted by Takala’s artistic ‘interventions’ which unravel our nicely woven conceptions of art.

Taking as her starting point well known genres and motifs from the history of art – such as landscape painting and vanitas motifs – Takala reveals the ‘orchestration’ behind the perfect configurations and accurate structure of the works.

In the age of mechanical reproduction painting’s conventional objective – imitation or resemblance of life – has been challenged by other media, and painting has moved towards abstraction. Emphasizing this circumstance Takala leaves only the traces of masking tape – modern art’s tool to shape and support artistic illusion – on the canvas, allowing even this element to peel off or crease. Like old tapestry. In doing so, Takala amputates the painting as representation.

Roughly speaking Takala peels the varnish off the painting and unveils the underlining layers, exposing even the blank canvas. As viewers we become aware of the painter’s construction of space – and thus also of the fictitious quality of this space. In her landscape motifs Takala, moreover, exhibits the fragility that characterises our natural systems, and discloses how our attempts to sustain an authentic environment often has the opposite effect. We end up ‘framing’ it; designing, taming and ‘trimming’ it, thereby turning nature into a cliché.

Takala’s paintings come across as art’s memento mori – a reminder that nothing lasts forever and that changes in style and method are inherent parts of any course of development. Sketches in pencil may have previously been regarded as mere drafts, having no true value in comparison with the painting. Today, however, they are considered works of art in their own right.

The title of the exhibition 'Smoke on paper' refers to one of the works included in show. The title is a pun on the well-known specification ‘oil on canvas’. Can smoke be regarded as a physical material on a par with oil? Can you actually hold on to something that ‘airy’? Using the title 'Smoke on paper' Takala questions what is real and what is constructed in the painting. Is it, in fact, all ‘fiction’, including the title? What is painting at all? Is it a transient form of visual description presenting the transient or perhaps the only constant thing in its revelation of transience?

Päivi Takala was born in 1970 in Lehtimäki, Finland. She obtained her degree from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and from Hochschule der Künste, Berlin. She has exhibited extensively in the Nordic countries as well as abroad. She has received both the Finnish Art Society’s William Thuring Award and grants from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Art Council of Finland and The Fine Arts association of Finland. She is represented by Gallery Anhava in Helsinki.