Erik Nieminen | Janus | 2014

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….A work like “Janus” has a literal metamorphosis occurring within its description – a space (the New York subway entrance at Columbus Circle) becomes an allegory for identity, for the passing of time and for moving from one realm to another – to new states. The title “Janus” relates to the Roman God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, passages, and endings. The structure of the work melds one reality on top of and into another. Colour comes onto it, with the elements being represented in green(earth), blue(air), red(fire) – and water being the fluid structural elements themselves, the essential architecture of the work and indeed of life itself.”