Erik Nieminen | Ricochet | 2013-14

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.”

“In the case of “Ricochet” the initial sketches were not more than a sequence of sequence of simple squares moving in and out, bouncing off each other (part of the reason for the title)…this relates to the technical narrative of the painting – that is its history, is based on the idea of something simple metamorphosing into a complex being. I remember it was Delacroix who said something like “begin with a broom and finish with a needle”.”

The muli-facetted perspectives of this complex painting allows the viewer to enter from different angles like portals serving as entrance doors in to into a very elegant possible world.