A scientific approach undergirds his relationship to painting: “It’s utterly beautiful how theories are put together, tested and certified,” he observes. “I’d like to think a similar kind of method applies to my artistic work. Observation, experimentation, analysis.” A composition might recall the pattern of gradually evolved rust, a garden past its prime, a bloom of mold, or ancient graffiti painted inside caves. Aurinko’s palette likewise mimics the surprising hues that occur in nature, evoking lichen, viscera, petals, fog, and mud.
With his accumulations of inchoate scrawls, rhythmic linework, and amoebic islands of erratically textured colour, the artist suggests flows of indeterminate meanings or concepts briefly grasped. These paintings present as fields of primordial events that might be cellular, ecological, or cosmic – whatever scale we, the viewers, bring to the compositions, we are prompted to consider the material of our own bodies as they interconnect with the material realities of our surroundings, all of it caught up in dynamic flux.
The surfaces carry traces of the artist’s shifting impulses. Dense passages of pigment contrast with airy, unanchored hieroglyph-like marks, creating a rhythm that oscillates between insistence and hesitation. These contrasts suggest an inner dialogue, a negotiation between control and abandon. Patterns seem on the verge of organizing themselves but remain deliberately unresolved. Rather than offering clarity, the paintings emphasise vital, generative force. The viewer is compelled not to decode the images but to inhabit the terrain of uncertainty they construct – an expressive field in which meaning is sensed rather than defined.
The works in the exhibition 'Pushed gently down the stairs by a muse' are reinterpretations, remixes and free associations based on a formative artistic encounter Aurinko experienced in childhood. The expressive piece had been painted by his daycare nurse, and his parents acquired it for him. “This painting is my Sistine Chapel, the Cologne Cathedral, a Bacon triptych and Richter’s Bach series. In the dark green painting, light filters into a dim cellar through a barred window, selectively revealing objects hidden in the gloom. A large chest, a lantern, a fur hat, wagon wheels without a wagon… eventually the gaze is drawn toward the stone stairs that lead upward to the top of the image.”
At the core of Aurinko’s practice lies the very same element found in this significant childhood artwork: an enigma. As an artist, he strives for the same quality; the work contains a sense of mystique that invites the viewer to return to it and see it anew each time.