Harri Puro’s expressive paintings constantly move around in the ground between figurative and abstract. The sense of figures in a landscape emerging from lived environments echo influences from art history and the visual language of impressionism, post-impressionism and genre painting.
Puro’s imagery draws from the artist’s personal archives – moments lived, close friendships, and a tightly knit community. His practice engages with the contradictions inherent in common life, addressing themes such as person’s mind in thought; people, situations, shapes and colours, rather than depicting actual reality. In his works the external and internal worlds intertwine, bringing a psychological dimension to the paintings. This also gives him a greater freedom, e.g. in allowing things to be illogical or unfinished. Elements can fall apart or still be in the process of forming, and the artist can play with paint and materiality. There is a strong sense of overlapping times and places, and of various in-between states: between sleep and wakefulness, between outer and inner reality, between the personal and the collective. It is often unclear whether the space depicted is an interior or an exterior. A certain sense of absurdity and humour is also something Puro consciously tries to bring more into his work, as these are qualities that feel intrinsic to him and ways through which to experience the world.
Puro’s technique is grounded in gestural painting, focusing on the creation of marks and traces. His process often begins with photographs he has taken himself. Although Puro’s works are figurative, he is considered as a formalist; always proceeding according to the needs of the painting rather than starting from the subject matter. Often the imagery begins to take shape through the way colours, forms and gestures are composed. Simultaneously, those follow the cues suggested by the painting’s initial sketch or composition. The process involves a great deal of intuition as well as an interplay between abstraction and representation, fragmentation and layering.
Harri Puro’s works have been exhibited e.g. Untitled Art Miami Beach and Lapponica Hall, Rovaniemi. His works are included in the collections of Seppo Fränti (Kiasma), Basware and numerous private collections.
