Reima Nevalainen at Mänttä Art Festival

Reima Nevalainen
Mänttä Art Festival
June 16–August 31, 2024

The artists for and theme of the Mänttä Art Festival 2024 have been announced. The Blast exhibition will revolve around light, perspective, spaciousness, and spatiality themes. A total of 36 artists and pairs of artists have been invited by the curator, Heli Ryhänen, to contribute to this year’s festival.
 

The Mänttä Art Festival is the largest summer exhibition of Finnish contemporary art. The award-winning Mänttä Art Festival is a destination regarded highly by art professionals and much loved by the general public. The XXVIII Mänttä Art Festival will be open daily from 16 June to 31 August 2024.

Reima Nevalainen graduated from the Kankaanpää School of Fine Arts in 2008 and was awarded Young Artist of the Year in 2016. Based in Porvoo, Nevalainen has held numerous solo exhibitions in Finland, other European countries, the United States, and Japan. His works are housed in the collections of the Helsinki Art Museum and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.

The collage and décollage technique used by Nevalainen is closely intertwined with the subjects of his paintings. His pieces result from a multi-layered process involving cutting, tearing, and covering. The technique is a laborious combination of adding and removing, experimenting, and making errors. For Nevalainen, painting means studying the physical reality and how it is observed; it is a counterforce for the immaterial images surrounding us. A painting makes us stop and awaken; it cleanses us – but it doesn’t do so by calling for attention; it finds its shape through intent observation.