11.4. — 4.5.2025

Minä, onni ja orvokki is a painting with several nested levels. There are animals and people, an armchair, towers and houses. Some appear as shadows, others float as colors.

The painting is also a place for looking, and at the same time it is the interface between two different spaces. In the space of Forum Box, the painting can be seen both large and small. There, inside the painting, a person searches for their essence, strives towards something, perhaps balance, perhaps happiness.

Paavo Paunu‘s (b. 1965) paintings and sculptures depict the human being – dreams and disappointments as well as the relationship with nature. Paunu has created large-scale works that have also acquired a spatial dimension. The paintings have become stages that expand to front and behind. Paunu is a painter of space, and he positions his paintings in such a way that they become installations. Wood as a material is one of the concrete platforms for painting: it can be carved and painted – it is possible to implant new elements on the surface of the wood. The sculptures show the careful, time-consuming work: only the working process brings out the wood material and gives it form, showing the material as it is.

Paunu is not limited by the usual tools of sculpture or painting, nor by obvious models, genres or references to theoretical sources. The voice of the works echoes from further away, from a world of its own, which is a human reality. It is characterised by psychological surrealism and expressive symbolism. It is as if Paunu is searching for the timeless core of the human being, the causes and consequences of actions, emotions ranging from goodness, confidence and triumphalism to shame and disbelief. Paunu’s images reflect the uniqueness of experience and the human relationship to the unknown dimensions of the world: nature, the depths of the mind, the imagination of the artist and the viewer.

Biography: Martta Heikkilä, PhD, Aesthetics