Momentary Landscape
Jorma Puranen has dedicated his most recent body of works, Momentary Landscape, to the depiction of momentariness. As a continuation of his ongoing series Icy Prospects, in which the artist creatively merges aspects of mythology with the fascination with the Arctic, Puranen now shifts his focus towards exploring the surroundings of his home in Finland. He states, "For over fifteen years, I have been engaged in landscape-related projects in which I have aimed to generally prevent the beholders from the opportunity of directly admiring the scenery by putting something in between them and the subject." What the viewer might not know is that these works, such as Seascape after the Rain 7, only show illusions of landscapes: Puranen painted a board with black, high-gloss acrylic and then took long exposures of the landscapes mirrored in the wet wooden surface. The results are not only extremely painterly and highly aesthetic but fragmented impressions of nature in which the board's surface with the morning dew and the landscapes reflection are inseparably superimposed. They exemplify Puranen's idea of preserving the moment when the first drops of rain fall upon the mirrored board, abstracting the reflection of his view with a memory.