PAINTING SERIES KAIKKI ON YHDENMUOTOISTA – SILJA RANTANEN

Silja Rantanen’s painting series Kaikki on yhdenmuotoista (Everything is Uniform) from 1993–94 revisits recurring central themes in her body of work. The creation of this series allowed Rantanen to once again paint, name, and define the relationships between her chosen themes. In this sense, the series is retrospective, functioning as a kind of inventory of subjects close and significant to the artist. The series documents the work of one of Finnish contemporary art’s key figures from a fresh perspective and within a new temporal framework.

The 20 paintings in the Kaikki on yhdenmuotoista series, marked with an ornamental rosette motif, together form a single cohesive artwork, unifying the themes the artist has explored throughout her career. The origins of these themes can often be traced to the history of architecture and painting. For instance, Rantanen has drawn on the spatial structures of certain Renaissance paintings or ancient wall paintings, omitting figures and other details. Her process engages in a dialogue with cultural history, offering a personal commentary on the tradition of images and various modes of representation.

While her broader body of work includes references and allusions to existing material, it is not solely defined by these elements. Many of Rantanen’s pieces are built on the fundamental elements of painting: the intrinsic value of color and form, the ability to create abstract space or motion, and the dynamic relationship between pattern and background.

Silja Rantanen has shared insights into the background of her series Kaikki on yhdenmuotoista (Everything is Uniform):
“I have a dream: The viewer has seen my entire body of work. The images juxtapose and intertwine in their consciousness. This is how I express my credo: ‘Everything is uniform.’ Over the past fifteen years, I have repeated about twenty motifs, which are themselves closely related, like the cross and the grid. My motifs connect to spatiality in its most conceptual, flat form. In my opinion, space is at its most abstract in painting. That’s why I depict projections rather than create sculptures or real spaces. From time to time, I catalog my motifs to create order. The Kaksi peiliä (Two Mirrors) drawing series (1985) was my first motif catalog. During a trip to Nepal in 1988, I drew all my motifs up to that point. /…/ Värityskirja (Coloring Book) (1993) is my third motif catalog. The Norwegian gallerist Kaare Berntsen understood my repetitive working method and commissioned a series of twenty paintings—a motif catalog—which is now presented as an exhibition.”

The Kaikki on yhdenmuotoista series was exhibited at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg at the turn of 1994–95. In the summer of 1995, it will be presented as an invited exhibition at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany. Throughout the 1990s, Rantanen’s work has been featured in extensive exhibitions, including the Artist of the Year exhibition at Kunsthalle Helsinki in 1993 and a retrospective shown in Norway (1993) and Sweden (1994). In 1994, Rantanen received the prestigious Edstrand Foundation Award in Sweden.

The exhibition has been made possible with support from Frame Contemporary Art Finland and the Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg. A catalog accompanying the exhibition features a text written by Aleksandr Borovski, head of the Department of Contemporary Art at the Russian Museum.

Translated with ChatGPT