Harri Puro’s expressive paintings constantly move around in the middle ground between figurative and abstract. Sometimes, the figures fragment into unrecognizable shapes, sometimes, they are easier to recognize, when the painter intuitively adds new elements in place of the old. The end result is a consequence of the mutual friction between these two modes of representation.
Mirroring the artist’s production of recent years, the new works on display lean more to the figurative side, and the depiction of figures has been elevated to the main role. Some of the figures in the paintings are of people in Puro’s immediate circle, but alongside them there have also appeared figures and various body parts dredged from the torrent of images on social media and from the abstract mass of paint.
The way in which Puro’s works advance can be compared to the confusing logic of dreams: during the process, the visual motifs and objects change shape and retreat from their original nature. The figures are often incomplete, and are either just finding their form or disintegrating into the picture surface. The dynamic of the works springs up out of the chaos and the friction of opposites, which according to Puro can be compared to complex, overlapping emotional states.
The Rovaniemi-born Puro graduated from Turku University of Applied Sciences’ Arts Academy in 2020 and, besides Kiasma and Basware, his works are in numerous private collections around the world.
