Erik Nieminen | Paradise not Lost | 2020

Born in 1985 in Ottawa Erik Nieminen is an emerging artist who spent several years in Berlin before he moved to Montréal where he now lives and works. In his paintings he creates possible worlds composed of contemporary impressions of urban space, of memories and abstract forms representing time and movement.

“My work represents an independent reality, a world that is dependent on our real world yet is separate from it. I seek to deconstruct reality that we inhabit in order to remake reality according to the logic inherent in the painting process….I am fascinated by the concept of urban space and those who inhabit it – a city being a phenomenon meant to sustain life but it’s really an awkward concept at best. Habitats for Homo sapiens. Within these habitat exist these mini-paradises, the artificial utopias we can escape to – and these are the zoos, biodomes, botanical gardens. They are an Arcadia, a small slice of Eden and even an attempt to recapture a supposedly lost innocence.”