Free artist, lives and works in Helsinki, Finland
Kimmo Kumela's (b.1971) art work alternates between small-scale and massive. His small-scale drawings form a multi-part series sometimes combined with large drawings where the foot of the page is sometimes left unfinished. Add newspaper pages with covered photos and texts as well as other surprising elements and the work is complete.
When Kumela covers words, one by one, in books and articles, he simultaneously leaves a mark and erases it. We have reached the essential sphere of drawing/writing/painting where the visible becomes invisible and the re-emerges as a new perceptibility. Maybe for this reason, Kumela's art work has a melancholic feel, for what could be seen earlier has now disappeared under a new surface. The viewer remains with a reference to this preceding element, almost like a memory left behind. In melancholy, our previous object of love dies or disappears, making loving him/her/it impossible. In Kumela's work, the covered text is lost and all that remains for us is but a trace or a shadow of it.
Kumela often uses collage as a method of presentation. I prefer calling his method collage rather than installation, because resembling Cubism, Kumela's contrast of work is unaffected and accentuates surface variations. Another link to Cubism is Kumela's way of playing with books and magazines, in other words, with texts. He seems to be asking in a metaphysical level, what difference is between reading a written text and decoding a picture - if indeed there is one.
When making drawings on a newspaper, the artist treats the fundamental issues of painting by being in direct contact with different layers, surfaces and coverage. The faintly visible base material adds another dimension where viewers can interact with Kumela's technical choices. The plain page of a newspaper featuring soon-to-be forgotten news and information transforms into something tragic, poetic, humoristic or, simply said, into something a lot more interesting than before.
Some of Kimmo Kumela's work almost demand to be looked at, for their scribbly-like nature gives birth to a light hazy impression that easily captivates the eye. In these patched works, Kumela seems to be examining the natural ground of the line and of what calls them into being. In addition, the composed and rascally humoured work beautifully adds flavour to the artist's philosophical working method. The philosophical aspect is created with the way the artist processes the problematic of gesture, expression, technique and pictoriality. Despite the philosophical side, Kumela's art work is not staid but rather playful and slightly ironic with hints of romantic emotionality. With several different displays, Kimmo Kumela portrays interesting and differing ways of expression and narrativity, even if the overall work of art itself is formed of similar parts to a great extent. This way, individual works are the building elements of a narration, able to transform into something new from situation to situation. The fascinating puzzle put together by Kumela practically invites one to lose track of time.
Juha-Heikki Tihinen
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