Maritta Tapanainen "Morphology"

Pavel Zoubok Gallery

poster for Maritta Tapanainen  "Morphology"

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The meticulously composed collages of Finnish-born Maritta Tapanainen transform intricate cut-outs from mechanical, scientific and botanical illustrations into new morphologies, or explorations into the organization of living systems and/or languages. In her most recent body of work, previously intimate environments have not only grown in scale, but in linear and spatial complexity. Evidences of the real are embedded in wildly organic arrangements that assume the qualities of automatic drawing, suspended against rhythmic backdrops of abstract planes. The accumulated fragments of pods, cells, tendrils and anatomical details coalesce to form a distinct sense of otherworldliness. Quirky and fragile, Tapanainen’s collages employ a somber palette of black, white and sepia tones. Critic Peter Frank observes that “the poetics of her works maintain not in what seems to happen but what seems to be”, and goes on to say, “What seems to be, especially in Tapanainen’s recent work, is a kind of near-animation, not so much suspended as diffused. These pictures are not of events but of conditions, still lifes rather than narratives, but still lifes invested with a visual energy that keeps them restless…Tapanainen finally comes off in these works not as collagist nor draughtswoman nor writer, but as a gardener, tending to fantastic, perhaps microscopic, indisputably vital eruptions of a whole new kind of flora.” Maritta Tapanainen has exhibited extensively in the United States since the early 1990s. This is her second solo exhibition at Pavel Zoubok Gallery.

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Schedule

from March 20, 2008 to April 19, 2008
Opening Reception: March 20, 6-8pm

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