Installation View, MPIB 2023. Photo: Lauri Kauppila
What if instead of being overwhelmed by complexity, we could transform our relationship with it and keep moving effortlessly and energetically forward? What if, instead of slowing down, the answer is to go deeper?
Relations at Risk with Relations
Max Planck Institute for Human Development MPIB
In 2023 I was invited to transform the welcoming hall of the Max Planck Institute MPIB into a colorful reflection on big systems themes. Adaptive rationality, collective intelligence, and deliberate ignorance were but a few of the institute’s research themes that resonated with my art. Allowing ourselves to get lost in a particular painting, we observe color relations that allow other color relations. Moving through the exhibition, the paintings could be experienced anew and in new combinations via the unique architecture.
This exhibition at MPIB was an important milestone and turning point for me personally. It allowed me to see the various aspects of my process as part of a larger whole. The disparate nature of my practice, working often on widely different color structures simultaneously, suddenly made sense. I realized that a poem I wrote, Crystalline, is actually a poem about a vision for individual work as well as for my artistic practice as a whole.
Flight of the Butterfly (2017), 130 x 130 cm, oil on linen. Photo: Eric Tschernow
Humans on the Beach, ARHGAP11B (2018), 150 x 150 cm, oil on linen. Photo: Nora Heinisch.
The color fantasy in my art is bordered by structures from science: the order of the genome, the aesthetics of mathematical distributions, and thoughts on the workings of the human visual systems.
Science can appear explicitly, or as the background web of ideas, the creative net that an artist relies on for the practicalities of creating complex color surfaces. In my art I draw on over a decade of deep involvement in the maths and sciences, and move freely between the discoveries of science as an aesthetic analogy, as metaphor, as play, and as a physical element. In my art, there is an attempt to negotiate the simultaneity of physical and intellectual space.
Installation view of Autumn Dance (2023) at MPIB. Photo: Lauri Kauppila.
I love math and science, and I think that science is funny and that scientists are very creative. To convey these aspects more directly, I have begun to incorporate performance into my artistic practice.
“Molecular Movements” was performed at the opening reception for SYSTEMS SYMPHONY. Through it, I shared some of the science stories and color ideas behind my paintings. Abstract painting for me is about creating a place of strength and openness. Chemistry and physics experiments allowed me to make the unseen seen in new ways. After the performance, the audience was invited to experiment and to make their very own color-changing cocktails (mostly non-alcoholic).
Meanwhile, my studio practice in itself has also become increasingly performative. The roots in this case lie, however, not in performance, but in the concept of physicality. I have always felt that a painting can influence my physical and psychological well-being in a space. It would not be surprising if my intuition was on the right track: more than half of the human brain is devoted to visual processing!
This painting makes it easy for me to start dancing in the room. Movement Variations (2023), 250 x 190 cm, oil on linen. Photo: Eric Tschernow.
Looking at this painting, I immediately connect with my core. Scratch the Ground and Smell the Microbes (2023), 210 x 180 cm, oil on linen. Photo: Eric Tschernow.
In the painting, or constructing, phase, I am primarily concerned with the surface structure and in creating a work that is able to communicate joy. Thus I make many explorations to develop my understanding of color layering and arrangement. I also observe how people react to my work in a space, and make a note when a work invites repeated views or a desire to physically engage with it, such as by touching or rearranging.
Incorporating a science or data structure into a painting places several restrictions on the formation of layers and the ability to erase mistakes. Organic forms and colors place their own, and different, restrictions. Navigating these challenges is a key focus of my work.
Dancing with Foxes (2022), 205 x 290 cm, oil on linen. Photo: Nora Heinisch.
The entire success of my artistic process rests on a continuous discovery of new color ideas. For this reason, my practice involves working on several types of paintings in parallel.
“Nature exists for us humans more in depth than in the surface. Therefore, into our vibrations of light, represented by reds and yellows, we need to introduce sufficient blues to make one feel the air.” - Cézanne to Bernard, 1904
In my work, I also explore the depth and complexity of our experiences in nature. What I do is exaggerate the sizes of color elements to create a symphony in space and time.
For Systems Symphony (2021) I combined systems thinking with the daily experience of bird song in a park at dawn springtime. Most of the painting was painted with my less dominant left hand in order to be able to repeatedly return to the emotional content of my experience. This strategy was important because this wall-sized work (320 x 465 cm, oil on linen) took many years to complete. Photo: Nora Heinisch.
Image Gallery
Short Bio: Kauppila currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia University and is the recipient of the Reginald Marsh and Felicia Meyer Marsh scholarship at the Art Students League of New York. In 2020 Kauppila was an artist in residence at iKSV in Istanbul, Turkey and in 2021 she was the Art/ist in residence at the Finnish Institute in Germany. In 2023 she was invited to present a solo exhibition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.
Catalog (Deutsch), (English)
Recent Interview (Deutsch)