About the Artist : Muriel Lässer

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Pilvi Kalhama's text about my MFA Thesis and work

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EXAMINER'S REPORT ON MURIEL LÄSSER'S MASTER'S THESIS

1)Solo exhibition ...And The Gods Made Love, Kasarminkatu Gallery of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, 24 July – 3 August 2008
2)Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Kuvan kevät – degree show in the Kasarminkatu Gallery of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 10 May – 1 June 2009

In the written part of her thesis, Muriel Lässer examines the three main pillars of her work: space, vision and form. Through them, she reflects upon her own creative process, her relationship to the traditions of art, and upon basic assumptions on how a painting is generally expected to function as a representation of reality and to construct reality through illusion. In her creative work, she nevertheless relies on the idea of the practice of art as production and being; as active presentation.

The central thing in Lässer's work is the spatiality of painting, both on the conceptual, internal level, and as a physical, spatially adapting factor. I see Lässer's 'sculptures' also as three-dimensional paintings that grapple with the problematics of space, that is, they are sculptures only in quotation marks. On the other hand, three-dimensional space in Lässer's output also refers to the betweenness of the work and the viewer. Or, more precisely, to the viewer's/artist's own awareness of space. It is this aspect which brings Lässer's abstract painting to life also for the viewer, bypassing the theoretical discourse around modernist art. In Lässer's case, the readings of modernist art are not relevant, except perhaps as echoing references or a reminder of the depth of tradition.

In Lässer's art the viewer finds herself in a free and playful space, in a cluster of abstract paintings where works are positioned in daring constellations. The individual works are also parts of a whole, as if trying to tell us viewers a story, which nevertheless is not linear, but progresses to the sides, up, diagonally, and so on, in many directions. In other words, Lässer is in no way grumbling against the modernist aesthetic, but nor does she accept as a given its dignity that at some point became serious. Instead, she accepts it as a respected model, yet turns the whole into a spatial spectacle, with a twinkle in her eye. What is universality, the modernists wondered. Lässer's answer to the question can be found in the spatial intensity which wells forth towards the viewer so that she forgets that she is viewing artworks on a wall. The world that opens up is stunning and utopian, yet here and now.

Seriality arises from modernist thinking, of course, but even its conventional devices are subtly subverted by Lässer's installations. Seriality appears as the repetition of squares standing on their corners and of bright primary and attention colours. Yet there is enough variation and fractures – in the form of a dialogue between geometry and organic brushwork – for everything to remain alive and natural. The action, eddies and speed taking place inside the individual paintings are explosive in their sensitivity on the unprimed canvases. Thus Lässer's painting is outwardly directed instead of closing in upon itself.

That Lässer describes her own working process as an active 'here and now' situation, it is present in the works and perceivable also by the viewer. The intuitive approach lends the works a certain ruggedness – a sense that not everything has been intentionally and with deliberate care placed on the canvas. There is also randomness, free forms and the joy of painting. On the other hand, the installations as a whole are quite thoroughly considered. One example is the white floor in the degree show, an element which gives the whole a sense of immateriality and spatiality.

There may even have been unintentional ‘randomness’ in the three-dimensional object paintings in the solo exhibition, because the works were not finished quite as thoroughly as they could have been. In the case of these works, their technical imperfection prevents viewers from letting themselves be carried away into the artist’s otherwise spatially multi-diverging world. The execution as regards objects is in fact more successful in the second exhibition. Hanging them on the wall also supports these works and establishes a connection to other paintings.

Lässer’s painting itself is a tour de force. Her canvases engage in a dialogue between material and non-material painting in a fresh and airy manner. One gets the impression that Lässer is not afraid of the empty canvas, but instead enjoys the tension between it and the marks of the brush. Individual paintings are actually just as airy as the hangings. At the same time, this airiness is actualised in concrete terms in the dialogue between colours, forms and the empty canvas. In the finished execution, the eye can make room for the mind.

As a viewer, I almost wonder how Lässer is able to bring out in such nuanced way the tradition that is present in modernist art, yet in her own art create from these aspects a fresh contribution to the tradition. In my statement I have reflected upon Lässer’s output against elements of modernism, but her art does not speak of them or express their stagnation into new forms. Lässer offers the viewer the pleasure of seeing originally recycled, new contemporary art.

I recommend Muriel Lässer's thesis to be accepted with honours.

18 May 2011

Pilvi Kalhama
Ph.Lic., art historian

Carolus Enckell's text about my MFA Thesis and work

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Examination Statement on the Degree Master of Arts

Muriel Lässer starts the foreword of her Master’s examination by stipulating that she has always related her artistic work to early modernist abstract painting. Lässer says that ever since her youth,she has been fascinated by the drastic transformation of an acquired logical relationship with the reality of the visual world with its space and form as representatives of the visual into a visual language composed of merely colour, line and surface.

She structures her Master’s exam based on this afore-mentioned attitude and divides it into three sections on which subjects’ artwork and visualisation build on according to her belief. The first part addresses The Space, as on both the space of the surface being painted and the space she herself represents as an artist. In the second part that refers to The Vision, Lässer describes her relationship to the artwork itself, and in the third part, called The Form, she examines emptiness as a shape and a basis for creation and how it nourishes opportunities for arts. One interpretation of her claims
reveals how she herself, as an artist, is an active part of her work of art and its expression.

The first statement on her art and artistry is, in itself, peculiar and interesting. To relate to the premodern abstract painting work with its dependence on romanticism and its concept of the artist as a symbol for both the subjective and personal, as well as a spiritual vision, clearly differs from the corruptive features of present art, where the institution itself and commercialism are allowed to
dictate what art looks like. Instead, Muriel Lässer wants to accentuate the individual in the artist, her or his personal vision as a true expression for reality and the right as an artist to be able to challenge acquired conventions and popular tastes in arts.

To rely on early abstract art and therefore incorporate into a tradition should be seen as a conscious and brave attitude for painting that continually encounters ignorance and prejudice but is also logical when considering painting as a linear development based on form. But as we all know, these are not the qualities that categorically steer the arts. And, of course, they shouldn’t be. Another attitude towards the form of painting that Lässer represents may be, in my opinion, that some of the
viewers perceive it conservative. I myself understand it differently; I identify the radical in her painting, because at its core, it counteracts communication through reading, is hard to interpret and instead appeals to an experience as a means of communication. In addition, Lässer emphasizes that her ”theses” are based upon her, i.e. the artist’s own, viewpoints. In her ”theses” on a painting (the object) being both an object and a surface, or actually a place for giving meaning, it seems like Lässer would follow, paradoxically, the problem that seems to be based on the doctrine of minimalism regarding the work of art as an expression for the dialectical between surface and object, and, simultaneously, the ideas of abstract expressionism on painting work being a result of the artist’s process of gestures. In other words, according to Lässer, one cannot separate between the work of art as a subject from the fact that it is concurrently an object for both a space in itself and a constructed illusion.

But the most interesting part in her ”theses” is that she, contrary to what could be perceived as a standard model in modernist aesthetics - namely to separate between subject and object, in philosophizing on space, vision and form, includes herself, the artist, as an essential part of the substance in the painting work. As Lässer uses viewing the starry sky as an example on how a space can be assessed as something never-ending and immensely bottomless and impossible to understand
what is seen from a measurable point of view, but is, however, capable of bringing us closer to this immeasurable by means of our intuition and fantasy, she has in an indirect and metaphoric way succeeded to describe both the foundation of an artistic act and experiencing as a means to ”understand” that which seems immeasurable to us.

Even when it comes to art as an expression for a vision, Lässer places herself, very understandably under the circumstances, in the centre of the vision and its creation. The vision relates to seeing, seeing as an intuitive form and also a physiological activity, namely observation as a result of our perception. The choice of base and its shape is also an important part of Lässer’s creativity. It is the
core of the final subject of the work of art. Kandinsky stipulates that the need for the artist to make oneself a part of the ingredients of the work of art is ”an inner necessity”.

The paintings by Muriel Lässer i have seen at two exhibitions look like they would be composed systematically and it seems that they were based on some kind of a dualistic concept comprising of a field of colour poured and spread out and where coincidence has settled its formal look and painting has then taken place on these, in a more constructive manner, clearly restricting the colour fields either to rectangular, rhythmic surfaces or as adjacent coloured lines with clear, compositional rhythm. It seems in detail that Lässer’s world of colour would be determined and would follow some sort of concept of colour complementing. Furthermore, there is a clear need in her paintings to create a dialogue between the colour as a liquid and the surface.

What astonished me at the first exhibition “.....And The Gods Made Love”, was how the exhibition seemed to be more of an installation. Her intention was probably to create an experience of an entity where the individual works constitute parts of a larger composition. An important part of the dynamic impact of the exhibition was that she had combined so-called diamond-shaped canvasses
with square, more passive forms.

Muriel Lässer’s thesis is a well-balanced and clearly formulated document on what, for her, constitutes the creativity in her painting and at the same time she manages to express her own personality and the essence of her artistic thinking.

She represents a diverging concept in arts and, in her work, manages to express an essential side of ”spiritual” quality where only the eye provides us with insight and knowledge of a world filled with light, but beyond the tangible.

Threfore, I strongly recommend granting Muriel Lässer a Master’s Degree.

Carolus Enckell, Artist
Karjaa on May 30, 2011