PAULIINA PIETILÄThe birds only sing about sex and violence vol 2 10.8.2024 – 1.9.2024

I’m a visual artist originally from Southern Ostrobothnia, and I now live and work in southern Sweden. I studied at the Nordic Art School in Kokkola and graduated from Malmö Art Academy in 2011.

I find my subjects during my walks and in the views that I experience in my everyday life. Many of my works depict twilight and industrial light. As a painter, I’m interested in exploring how colours meet and what happens at this meeting point.

I use photos that I have taken myself as a basis for my paintings. A work is typically based on several photos of the same subject. As I paint, I manipulate the angle, perspective, colour scheme and lighting to depict the subject as I perceive it.

My paintings are reflections of our times and what it means to be a human being. Through painting, I try to show how what we see and the way we see it depends on the particular circumstances at the time of viewing.

Reality is, thus, a relative concept that individuals perceive through their senses. While I was preparing for this exhibition, my own reality was distorted by a disease of the eye that causes double vision. While I’m now recovering, it was a frightening experience as a painter. Later, I realised that I had unintentionally introduced the double images I was seeing into the paintings I made at that time.

Artists use the materials available to them, whether they like them or not. For me, painting is a way to turn unwanted material into something beautiful and of significance – to change the meaning of things. To this thought refers also the name of the exhibition.

Pauliina Pietilä