Ari Ahlholm

Erika Adamsson

Erika Adamsson is interested in the illusion of the past. Her artwork often features a person in a space from past. The models are found in authentic photographs, contemporary drama guides in home museums, or still images of a film. Just as memories fade from the past, the paintings are not documentary but colored and constructed narratives. Even when staged, the atmosphere of the painting is what we experience as authentic and believable. Nostalgia is an escape from everyday life, like a moment’s delay of a lonely visitor in a museum salon, where one can sink into the past and identify with the lives of the previous residents of the house. The abundance of details in the design of the interiors and the old style furniture define the past in Adamssons’ paintings.

Adamsson likes to paint on slippery surfaces, such as plexiglass or aluminium. The painting technique in her latest works is oil paint on an aluminum plate. Aluminum allows the paint to slide on the surface of the work, where the hand and brush do not brake. The fast painting phase is preceded by a slow work phase, where the artist delimits the painting surface meticulously.

In the finished painting, the silvery aluminum surface gleams in the presence of paint. 

Erika Adamsson lives and works in her hometown Turku, where she has also studied. She graduated from Turku School of Fine Arts in 1996 and currently teaches painting at the Turku Arts Academy. She was presented in numerous solo exhibitions in Finland. The artist was awarded the William Thuring Prize of the Finnish Art Association in 2018. Adamsson’s  works include the collections of the Finnish state, the Saastamoinen Foundation,  Lars Swanljung Collection, City of Turku and numerous private collections.