Through Images

Where were you born? The first question confuses the artist, this is such a difficult question. These are such difficult matters. How come, wonders the reporter. The artist clarifies what she means about the difficulty of the question by saying that such a question is unimportant where art is concerned. It just draws attention to the non-essential or, in Nina Roos' opinion, the artist herself, when all attention should be focussed on the works.

However, she continues - what did you ask? And answers in the same breath:

Porvoo. I moved to Helsinki when I started studying art history at the University. Then I was in Sweden for a few years while my ideas matured. Afterwards, I came back to Helsinki to study at what was then the Ateneum, but nowadays is the Academy of Fine Arts.

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?

I just gradually became one.

Did you have any role models?

Not particularly. At first, I studied the theory of art at the University and then I realised that it's better to do it myself. I didn't want to just read about art.

How did you come to choose painting as your form of expression?

When I studied in the 80s, it was quite natural to choose that way. Those days, all the teachers in the Ateneum were painters, sculptors or graphic designers. So it was limited to just those three areas. This was certainly one reason I chose painting. I certainly could have changed to something else over the years. On the other hand, it's also so that when an idea begins to go smoothly in your own medium, it's difficult to change to something else, for example, video art, because it calls for a whole different way of thinking. That's the way my brain worked. When I've got into one area, I'd rather develop and expand it than change over to something else. Even though nowadays quite many make videos or take pictures at the same time. But I can't work that way. My ideas work best in this medium, painting.

How do you relate to older art?

I like old art a lot. I'm not really interested in Modernism, I'd much rather have painters from the Renaissance or Baroque. They're really interesting in the sense that so much can be said in such a limited form. How they built up the meanings in the pictures.

How was your own style formed? Have you been painting long?

Well, only 13 years. It's like I've just started. It feels a really short time. The thing is there are always new problems in painting. When you try to solve them, the form develops in a way and takes off in a different direction. The various 'places' in my paintings demand different appearances.

Somewhere you humorously spoke about the way you work saying that when you paint a certain red you get the taste of a Marianne sweet in your mouth.

At some stage these things were somehow on the surface. I approached my work through the senses. Now it's in the background. I've also always dealt with the nuts and bolts of a painting by avoiding them. I wanted the painting to be born in the viewer's mind. Now my paintings are more like pictures. I don't see any boundary between figurative and non-figurative art and that's why I don't really want to ever use those terms. However, everything is just reflection on different levels. The subject of my paintings isn't a figure, a car or whatever, but what I want to express and say, it needs these 'channels'.

What's that idea?

It's hard to put into words. I try to have, and I want there to be, many layers in my paintings. The layers unravel according to the time and depending on the viewer, so that there's really no clear message in them. It's essential to the images in my paintings. It's interesting how it's possible to build up layers more than, for example, in pictures by the media. For example, an advertisement must make an impression on many people in as short a time as possible. So we are moving in different areas.

Viewers want to see identifiable things, figures, stuff.

Some of my paintings have been based on just such an idea that there's no such thing as an abstract image. The paintings I did in the mid-90s are just like that. They're not abstracts. They always draw you in some direction and they are, in a way, interacting with the viewer. Nowadays, it's hard to paint because, at present, paintings are interpreted so powerfully through tradition. It's difficult to change the way of approaching them. If you think, for example, about video art, it doesn't have this long, weighty tradition of interpretation.

How have you been getting ready for this retrospective of yours?

By trying to get the last paintings finished. Because there's so much new stuff in the Exhibition, you can view the whole thing as more of a dialogue between old and new work.

Have you had any great influences that might have guided your life choices?

That's a really absurd question. Everything has an influence. I can't, however, say there's a particular artist who I would have formed a powerful relationship with. It's more a question of environment. Everything that belongs to my life affects everything else. Some really insignificant thing might have influenced the choices I make in my work.

Are there any other fields or types of art close to the way you do things? Could you imagine, for example, that poetry could be close to your work?

I can understand what you mean when talking about poetry. I can even say that poetry is closer to painting than, say, photography. But people don't think that way. To them it's just visual art and literature. When I use the word 'poetry' I mean, in this connection, transparency and mobility so that the material doesn't stop the process?. Now I'm interested in connections between painting and films. In both, I think, it's a question of condensed pictorial narrative. You can move more freely in time and place.

Do you use cinematic influences in your work?

As a matter of fact I try to. It's interesting to see where this link will lead to. You must look to another field of art rather drawing from the tradition of painting. In films and painting, however, it's a question of different media and you can't just take the tricks and methods to use as such. For example, my series Scenario and Rotation depict fictitious events. I don't show one single image in them, but overlapping events which lead off in different directions. Paintings are built up of different kinds of 'editing'.

How will you carry on after the Exhibition?

Hopefully, just the same as always.

Päivi Oja

Nina Roos, Through Images
12 May - 19 Aug