Conversation from the exhibition catalogue from Hannaleena Heiska's exhibition at the Gothenburg Museum of Art 29 April – 23 August 2015.
THREE SERIES: ON ARTISTIC PRACTICE, STORYTELLING AND EVERYDAY EXISTENCE
I: OBSERVATORIES
Mika Hannula: During the summer of 2014 and the early winter of 2015, you worked on a new and different series of works on the theme of observatories. Tell me about the background – what’s the story behind your process?
Hannaleena Heiska: I see it as a logical continuation of Blade Runner, a series of paintings I did in 2013 (From the exhibition All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain). I’m still fascinated by artificial intelligence and the possibility of eternal life, that we might live forever, for instance on a virtual plane of reality. I’m also very interested in the future and in life after death, for instance in the hypothetical existence of a multiverse, and that after death we might continue to exist in a parallel dimension, or that we might at this very moment be leading a parallel existence on some other plane of reality.
MH: The multiverse? What is it and why is this idea appealing to you?
HH: It’s the prospect of life after death that fascinates me, though unrelated to any religious aspects. There are physicists who theorize that the universe is a consciousness hologram, something like a film projected on a screen, which could explain the supernatural, mystical and spiritual experiences that people have. There are levels to this holographic universe that we cannot perceive consciously. All in all the whole multiverse theory seems far too utopian to fully comprehend.
I once read a (pseudo-scientific) article that claimed that our consciousness is non-localized. In other words, when our body dies, our consciousness doesn’t, it just travels to some other universe. I find this thought comforting.
MH: But returning to your observatories, there’s a clear and meaningful connection between your new and earlier series of paintings. How did this process begin? Or to simplify: How did you jump from silver screen androids to astronomical telescopes to these peculiar-looking buildings? How did you come up with these forms and shapes? And what is their visual appeal?
HH: I can’t put my finger on any particular moment or period when I became interested in observatories as part of my artistic practice. I was up late every night with my newborn baby, contemplating the future in a near-psychotic state of sleep deprivation.
Fatigue can sometimes produce moments of enlightenment similar to what is experienced by ascetic practitioners. I vaguely recall staring at the night sky while everyone else was sound asleep. As my mind wandered, I hit upon an idea, and suddenly I found myself surfing the web for images of observatories. I felt drawn by their unusual, eye-catching shape. They appealed to me both visually and intellectually.
The feeling was the same as when I see a work of art that inspires me. It gets my skin tingling and takes my breath away. It fills me with hope and a sense of excitement that the world makes sense and there’s yet another good reason to exist. I feel inspired and burn with desire to get to my studio and get started on my own work. The feeling of hope comes from a sense that I might surpass and surprise myself, without having to predefine who I am as an artist or what I might come out with next. It’s about being open, courageous and, well, hopeful.
These feelings flooded over me as I looked at those pictures of observatories. I felt a strong urge to get to my studio and resume working. I wanted to draw those clean, crisp beautiful forms. I wanted to strip away all the clutter and extraneous detail and focus on the essentials. I wanted a pure celebration of form. As I looked at those beautiful buildings, I found them very comforting and calming.
Through those solitary buildings I tried to define myself and my existence – and that’s how they’re connected to my earlier movie androids.
MH: You chose paper and charcoal rather than canvas and paint. What was the motivation for this choice?
HH: I took a break from painting during my maternity leave. At some point I noticed myself going through the motions of painting in my mind every day, and I began to also feel a strong urge to draw. Charcoal seemed especially tempting, because there’s something so revealing about it. It’s such a merciless medium. You draw a line and the line is either interesting or it isn’t. Charcoal forces you to work in this black-grey-white scale without the exuberance and ‘special effects’ of colour. It’s all about skill and practice. Charcoal drawing is exasperatingly tricky, but there’s a certain masochistic pleasure to it.
Charcoal is unsexy, which is another thing I find intriguing. Perhaps the thing that makes it so perfectly captivating is that charcoal drawing (like painting) is thought to be such an anachronistic activity for our time. It’s slow-going and takes effort. What’s more, charcoal is carbon, the basis of all organic matter, nature’s cycles and life itself.
When I draw, I fill up the entire surface of the paper with charcoal and then I start coaxing out an image by erasing lines with a rubber or scrap of chamois leather. The technique is surprisingly similar to how I paint. I want my charcoal drawings to express something timeless, infinite and ineffable, something impossible to verbalize.
MH: Hang on, you mean you draw in reverse order, as it were? You start with a black, filled-in surface, and then you tease out an image by erasing lines. Why go about it back to front?
HH: When people draw, they often start with the outlines and then flesh them out. I create form by erasing lines, but traces of the charcoal remain imprinted on the paper and to some extent visible even after it’s erased.
Working in reverse order is a bit like suddenly driving in left-lane traffic. You have to jump-start your brain into a new way of thinking and try to stay in the right lane. It’s somehow perversely absorbing to tickle your imagination by working back to front.
MH: Looking at your series of grey observatories, they closely resemble their real-life counterparts, but their presence in your drawings seems at once categorically fictive. These structures and figures are beautiful, yet at the same time they are disconcertingly strange. What special sense or sensibility were you after?
HH: I wanted to locate my observatories in the middle of emptiness, which perhaps makes them seem a little imposing and menacing. The surrounding vacuum highlights their basic function and identity. I chose the images intuitively from among hundreds of photographs. As I began drawing, I simplified them by emphasizing the basic form and leaving out certain details. Their enigmatic quality is heightened by this process of simplification, for instance by the absence of doors and windows.
The observatories in my drawings are a random sample from around the world, together forming a kind of global network of mechanical eyeballs. They are like modern cathedrals grappling for the unknown, for the secrets of the universe.
MH: The gaze and its object feed each other, though not as equals or in harmony. Still, an exchange takes place: something passes from one to the other, and something is altered. We return to the basic function of an observatory: it’s essentially a tool for seeing into the great beyond. But what do we see, what are we searching for, and what do we hope to find there? Who or what might be looking back? Or perhaps most saliently: How does the thing we expect to find ‘out there’ influence us in the here and now?
HH: “I looked and looked but I didn’t see God.” – Yuri Gagarin
“We are but shadows and dust.” – Horace
MH: These two quotes are from two different worlds and periods in history. Gagarin (1934-1968) was the first human in outer space. He orbited our planet in a spacecraft called the Vostok on April 12, 1961, as history tells us. Then we have the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–27 BCE), who is best known for coining the adage carpe diem.
The two quotes are worlds apart, yet they address the same thing. What does this link across the ages and continents tell us?
HH: That we are what we gaze at through our telescopes. Space dust.
II: BLADE RUNNER
Mika Hannula: Blade Runner is a series of paintings that debuted in your 2013 gallery exhibition All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Where is this title from – what’s the reference?
Hannaleena Heiska: It’s an excerpt from a powerful monologue spoken by the android Roy Batty right before his death near the end of Blade Runner. As the story goes, the scene was wholly improvised by the actor playing the android, Rutger Hauer.
My paintings are traces of lost moments, just like rehearing a once-loved album can bring back a particular mood or moment, even a fragrance, with frightening accuracy.
MH: These are highly unusual paintings and allusions. Where did you get your ideas and how do they relate to your previous gallery exhibition, Altered States?
HH: I began fearing death after my father died (in autumn 2011), so I started painting as a way of subduing the fear. I was inspired by the world of my favourite movie and began painting my own versions of its beloved characters: the teary-eyed replicant Rachael, who believed she was human; the replicant Roy Batty, who, aware of the impending moment of his death, drops to the ground and begs his maker for more time. I also painted images of animal replicants and that melancholy city in its rain-drenched neon light.
I also did portraits of those heroic astrochimps, those brave little creatures that were sent off into outer space to destinations unknown. Those that returned alive from the great beyond were given real names instead of serial numbers: No.65 aka Chop Chop Chang aka Ham, Abel, Sam, Yorick aka Albert VI.
These paintings marked a new phase for me both technically and thematically. There was a time when I painted oils the same way as watercolours, without touching up my brushwork. I still prefer the alla prima (wet on wet) technique, but here my brushwork was more polished, though there are also rougher strokes still visible as I spontaneously applied them.
The paintings in my previous exhibition were inspired by popular music and by philosophical contemplations on existence and animal-related topics. My newer works were in turn inspired by cinema and my personal experiences, though the animal theme is still there in the background. My latest paintings form a process-integrated group; they are like close-ups of a never-to-be-finished film.
MH: Let’s talk more about the background story: Blade Runner? Why does this film still interest you? It’s so ‘80s – couldn’t you come up with anything better/worse?
HH: (Ha ha!) It’s the theme that’s important to me, not the visual style or the era. It’s based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which gives more emphasis to themes such as animal rights philosophy than the movie does. And of course it also asks: What is humanity, what sets us humans apart? I find this question endlessly fascinating.
The cinematographer of Blade Runner is quoted as having said “It’s not what you light, but what you don’t light.” The same principle is interesting when applied to painting. How much is too much, and how little is enough? What must I omit for the image to work? There are endless, difficult choices to be made during the painting process. I love rich forms, and when I paint, I let my intuition guide me. Afterwards it’s hard to explain why I chose to erase a particular superfluous brushstroke. But erasure is part of the process. I usually document it by photographing my paintings at different stages to gain insight into how it takes shape. When I flip through the images afterwards, I often notice that many of my choices were spot-on. You just have to have faith in the process.
MH: About the painting process: When you’re preparing for an exhibition, you try out many paths – some take you onwards, others switch direction, and some lead to a dead end. Which specific work did this series begin with?
HH: A painting called Vanessa is perhaps the foremother of this series, but I suppose my first version of Rachael is the painting that really started it off. Both works are very important to me personally.
I need to throw myself into painting without knowing where the process might lead and without any preconceived end result. This approach has brought incredible joy to my work. I’ve also learned to regulate my creative energies to some extent. If I hold off painting for a couple of days and just focus on developing ideas, I’m able to sustain my excitement and build up positive pressure. Concentration is easiest when I’m absolutely consumed by the need to paint.
MH: What strikes me about the paintings in this series is their powerful inner rhythm. It’s the signature rhythm of painting, the distinctive motion of the brush and the hand, which has an unusual effect in this case: the paintings form a coherent group, yet there is powerful inner tension, even outright conflict within them. What is the significance of this rhythm, and how conscious was it?
HH: The inner tension and dynamic are the main strength of these paintings, I think. I consciously aimed to create a sense of movement when I was painting. The effect I was looking for was a nebulous blurriness, as if the image were smeared by raindrops, but I also wanted to evoke the passage of time. The primer spread on the raw canvas is an important part of the painting. The rough strokes of gesso provide a rhythmic contrast to the more polished over-layers of oil paint. I wanted the paintings to have many layers, physically too, each directing our gaze in a different direction.
MH: About painting and the moving image: Over the past few years you have also created some very intense video pieces with a highly filmic style of expression. What inspired you to branch out into video, and how does video-making compare to painting?
HH: I began working with moving images alongside painting while I was studying at the Fine Arts Academy, where I did some experimentation, with Super 8 film, for instance. The difference I found most interesting was that a painting tells its story in a single image, but video offers the luxury of using many images consecutively.
The brainstorming and processing of ideas is very similar with both mediums. It’s a complicated tapestry, and it takes time to work your way through it. With painting, it happens by doing, and you have to leave room for chance, whereas when you shoot a video, you have to plan every split-second carefully beforehand. Making a video is a close team effort with the cinematographer and film editor, but when I’m painting I’m completely alone with the choices I make in my studio.
The two video pieces in my previous exhibition, Ridestar (2010) and Altered States (2010) had an influence on my style of painting. Both feature a lot of extreme close-ups of surface textures. The camera slowly grazes the figures’ skin, as if licking them with brushstrokes. I tried to achieve the same languid style of highlighting surface textures in many of the paintings in that same exhibition. They teetered on the verge between abstract and representational art: sharp one moment and blurry the next.
MH: And at the crux of it all is that difficult, nasty question: Inspiration – what it is and where does it come from?
HH: Inspiration? On the one hand I despise the word, but on the other hand it’s apt. Ideally it’s a state of deep concentration, or flow, which is something that needs to be nurtured and fed. I follow certain routines in my studio to help it along. Sometimes it can be extremely hard to achieve mental focus – it takes self-discipline and elbow grease.
And then, of course, almost like the catalogue to the whole exhibition, is the ‘soundtrack’ of All those moments will be lost in time:
Blader Runner Vangelis
Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) Various artists
Paavoharju
Susanne Sundfør
Grimes
Planningtorock: W
Mondkopf: Rising Doom
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Leonard Slatkin: St. Louis Symphony Orchestra)
Allegri: Miserere (Peter Phillips & The Tallis Scholars)
Type O Negative: October Rust
16 Horsepower
Mirel Wagner
Current 93: Black Ships Ate the Sky
Conan the Barbarian (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
III: ALTERED STATES
Mika Hannula: Moving in reverse order again, let’s return to the series of paintings that dates furthest back in time – Altered States. The title itself alludes to a certain continuity or trajectory that is identifiable in your oeuvre. It forms a continuum in perpetual motion, with varied inflections and modulations. What is the background and motivation to Altered States? How do you feel about these pieces today, years after painting them?
Hannaleena Heiska: Altered States takes its cue from many sources and personal interests, foremost my love for animals. I’ve never wanted to be directly political in the sense that politicism is understood in the visual arts today. Rather, I’ve wanted my works to have many levels, with personally important issues embedded in between. They might also contain references to popular culture, such as music I hear or a movie I happen to see that strikes a chord with my artistic process of that moment. I also want my paintings to have that hazy, ineffable quality that defines them as art. Of course I also paint the kind of paintings that I would personally like to see in a gallery, but the viewers are of course free to interpret them as they wish.
I included two video pieces in the Altered States series, the eponymous video (2010) and Ridestar (2010), which revisit the same themes as the paintings. These works all address the question: How would it feel to be somebody else? I plunged into this idea by examining the surface textures of animals and hybrid creatures. All the paintings came about spontaneously using the all prima technique.
MH: One shot is all you get with this technique. How often do you miss the mark? What role is played by chance?
HH: Although it may seem a quick technique, the process is slow, because hits are rarer than misses. And you can’t hurry the process. Chance of course plays a big role. My painting technique is the sum total of my background knowledge, whim, crisscrossing influences, practice, concentration, and chance. You need a sharp, trained eye to tell apart the hits from the misses.
This isn’t always self-evident – you might need to take time observing and relating to the painting. You might even have to distance yourself from it. Or you might need a (trusted) second opinion. A second pair of eyes is useful because you can project your painterly ideas. If the painting is a failure, a second opinion opens your eyes to what was good about it and reminds you of what you were trying accomplish in the first place. If it’s a success, you can bask in a moment of triumph – until the next nerve-wracking studio session comes along.
MH: What are the contrasts and similarities between video and painting? How do they show when you’re working?
HH: As I already mentioned, the main difference is that when I paint, I work in solitude, but when I’m shooting a video, I’m part of a team and I have to articulate my thoughts and ideas – which might be very vague – to fellow members of the crew. Communicating one’s ideas requires good personal chemistry and trust. Making videos has been a great learning experience for me. When you’re on a shoot, you need to know exactly what you’re doing, because time is money. As with my paintings, I try to leave room for chance, but usually each shoot is planned in advance as thoroughly as possible. For instance I took a calculated risk with Today We Live, and it paid off. It was filmed like a documentary; I let the subjects do their own thing without directing them in any way. This way I got exactly what I was after – and a little extra into the bargain.
MH: Or let’s take Blizzard King as an example. Instead of seeing a face, we see an obscuring gesture that frames the space and draws our attention. The organic form and motion retain their mystery, their element of surprise. You can’t figure it out just by looking; you have to go with the flow and live in the moment. The moment constitutes its own reality, its own world, with its own particular intensity and integrity. How would you compare Blizzard King to a work like Rachael? How strong or weak is the psychological continuity between them, and what is the relationship between your animal figures and androids?
HH: There is a strong tie between my animal figures and androids. They have many elements in common. The movie androids are not supposed to have any feelings, and the same is often believed of animals: that they can’t express feelings and are not conscious of their mortality.
MH: Let’s return to the otherness of your work, that sense of the strange, wondrous and uncanny. This is an awkward, roundabout question, but a necessary one in some respect: What’s it all about? Is difference something to which we aspire, yet never attain? It is a mirror, a raw reality we might prefer not to witness? Or is it a window, a passage into another world? Or an adventure, like Alice’s famed journey into Wonderland?
HH: Maybe it’s all those things. It defies definition. One moment it might be a mirror, a shiny surface into which we collide when we believe we have found something real. Perhaps in the end we’re all a bit odd and inscrutable. Of course otherness is easier to accept when presented as fantasy. I’m intrigued by the Mexican director Quillermo Del Toro and how his film Pan’s Labyrinth unfolds on two levels, both in a violent reality and in a fantasy world.
Or then otherness is a window through which we can safely observe the unknown. I personally feel the many levels of my art are easy to access, if you want to. But it’s the viewer who ultimately chooses how to interpret the work. In any case, it’s important to be open and not to surrender to fear. Fear does nothing for creativity.
Pursuit of the unattainable is what drives my artistic process and keeps me going. It’s there right in front of me, and sometimes I snatch a tiny piece of it, only to watch it evade my grasp and slip away. I see the process as a kind of adventure, because the end result is always unknown, and I want to take risks.
As a teenager I dreamed of a career as a professional ski bum. Later I dreamed of a life as a surfer riding the ocean waves. After ditching these plans, I found the freedom and excitement I craved by creating art. These are apparently the necessary conditions for my work – and my survival in general, in fact. Otherwise I couldn’t grow in any direction, and there would be no point in working.
© Translated by Silja Kudel
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