2014 NORTHERN ARTIST
Jaakko Mattila
EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art. 22.08. - 02.11.2014.
The lure of the unintentional
Jaakko Mattila's statement that
his works have no meaning, "They have nothing to say", struck me. It's
rather brave to strip a laboriously created work of art of all its meanings,
though this is not to say that it would not have potential significance.
One aim in creating art may be to produce a work that has no meanings,
in which case one of them is that it does not have a meaning. All the others
are created by the viewer. It's inevitable.
Consider, for example,
Mattila's color circle compositions. They are undeniably beautiful.
Naturally beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but there’s more to it than
that: the experience of a floating, ever deepening movement of space. It
creates a pleasant sensation of weightlessness, spaciousness, movement and
order that seems to be on the brink of losing its cohesion. A state just
before entropy.
"Meaninglessness" acquires meanings like enticing
emptiness, like honey to the bees. Thus one of artist's aims has been
fulfilled.
Markku Valkonen (translation Michael Wynne-Ellis)