BIO
Elina Länsman’s works explore memory, the mind, and the landscape; they search for a path from placelessness to place. They seek to uncover something beneath the surface, something distant. They depict experiences for which one searches for explanations and words. Her art brings together the everyday and the surreal, the visible and the imagined, the real and the mythical.
Elina Länsman (née Sipilä, b.1979, Oulu, Finland) lives and works in Nuorgam, the northernmost village of Finland. She works mostly with painting and stone lithography, but has also created public artworks made of steel. After receiving her Master of Arts degree, complemented by a number of additional credits, Elina Länsman has spent highly influential residency periods in Northern Norway and France. Besides her own studio in Nuorgam, she has been working with lithography in Helsinki Litho and Idem Paris. Elina Länsman has had solo exhibitions in Finland, Norway, France and Japan. She has also participated in many group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. Year 2014 she was nominated for the Queen Sonja Print Award. Elina Länsman’s works are represented, for instance, in the collections of the State of Finland and Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and in numerous private collections.
PORTRAIT
The tension between nature and culture represents the ambivalence in Elina Länsman’s works. Inherited from philosophic and artistic tradition, she is enriched from her journeys, from her reflexions, from her fascination for the far North and indigenous cultures.
Elina pictures a mysterious and tumultuous river between two opposite banks. On one side the call of nature, on the other the impossibility to merge into it without the loss of what makes us human: our self-consciousness and our thoughts. Mysterious is our identity and the world around us. Such mystery represents an unstable and sometimes painful harmony.
From the metaphysical loneliness to the physical loneliness, here is where a sensitive consciousness arises. Between the coldness and hardness of a rock, the warmth of a home, and the wild landscapes where silence is thick and almost mineral. An inside and an outside, combining themselves, answering each other, opposing one another. Elina Länsman’s work is driven by these conflicing relations, like an intimate wound, seeking reconciliation.
Far from political issues, from global distress, from style, stars and artistic «coups», there is much to learn about her creations. To find out the meaning, to rediscover the silence and the intimate mystery which we are made up of and surrounded by. Romanticism looses its lyricism but not its power. Against the tyranny of reason and theory, against the victory of technique and progress, Elina Länsman’s work helps us take a deep breath and invites us to a spiritual and persistently comtemplative journey.
Sébastien Toda, Diploma in Philosophy
FRENCH VERSION (original)
La tension entre nature et culture constitue toute l’ambivalence de l’œuvre d’Elina Länsman. Héritée d’une longue tradition philosophique et artistique, elle s’est enrichie de ses voyages, de ses réflexions, de sa fascination pour le grand nord et les cultures autochtones. Elina révèle la présence d’un fleuve mystérieux et tumultueux entre ces deux berges. D’un côté une nature qui nous appelle et de l’autre l’impossibilité de nous y fondre totalement sans perdre ce qui fait de nous des hommes, notre conscience et nos questions. Mystère sur notre identité, sur le monde qui nous entoure, mystère d’un ensemble qui forme une harmonie instable et parfois douloureuse.
De la solitude métaphysique de l’homme à la solitude physique, ici une conscience sensible se dégage. Entre la froideur et la dureté de la roche au foyer qui protège en passant par des paysages de début de monde, d’un silence dense, presque minéral. Un dedans et un dehors qui se chevauchent, se combinent, se répondent, s’opposent. C’est bel et bien un croisement puissant de toutes ces relations qui anime l’œuvre d’Elina Länsman, comme une intime déchirure qui cherche une réconciliation.
Loin des questions politiques, des drames mondiaux, des querelles de styles, des stars et des coups artistiques, on découvre dans son travail l’exaltation contrastée d’un monde qu’il nous appartient de comprendre et d’interpréter. Retrouver le sens, le silence, l’intime mystère qui nous constitue et nous entoure. Le romantisme se dépouille ici de son lyrisme mais non de sa force. Contre la tyrannie de la raison et du concept, contre la victoire de la technique et du progrès, ses œuvres sont une respiration profonde, une invitation au voyage spirituel et contemplatif.
Sébastien Toda, Paris France