Impossible Realities: Art and Simulation with Erik Nieminen
Erik Nieminen paints impossible realities and manipulates the familiar in surreal abstract landscapes. Erik hails from a family of artists, so creativity has always been an integral part of his life. Erik was brought up in Ottawa but has spent time living in Berlin and Montreal, drawing from both cities’ rich cultural landscapes.
In his artwork, Erik disassembles and reassembles reality on the canvas, combining familiar scenes with warped lenses of abstraction. Erik’s artwork engages with the dichotomy of urban spaces and artificial natural environments such as biodomes, portraying the struggle between past and future, organic and artificial, simulation and reality. In pieces that combine vivid realism with dizzying surrealism, Erik defies the expectations of the viewer and draws attention to the multi-layered and messy process of ‘creating’ reality in the modern world.
Can you tell us a bit about your background as an artist and how you got interested in pursuing art professionally?
I was brainwashed early, so to speak. My father is an artist, as is my uncle. There are other artists in the family going back a few generations. Growing up in Ottawa, we would make weekly visits to the National Gallery. Really, I didn't see being an artist as an exotic career choice, and for that matter, I didn't even think of it as a traditional "career," per se. It was just part of life.
Beyond that, I completed a BFA at the University of Ottawa and a MFA from Concordia University. The curious thing about university art schools is that they don't teach you how to be an artist or even many skills. They serve mainly as a mechanism to expand your horizons (along with providing the veneer of credibility).
Your artworks play with distortions of reality and light. What drew you to these concepts?
From a young age, I loved early modernist painting - cubism, futurism... things like that. Those painters were fascinated by how one could depict time, space, and memory in two dimensions by taking apart elements of our reality and reassembling them semi-abstractedly on canvas. We can think of the reflection similarly, as something that combines multiple moments in time, depending on the reflective surface (usually glass or water, in my case). It's an ephemeral phenomenon, rationally slippery, and it allows us to see beyond ourselves, to twist and manipulate our vision of what is real.
A reflection can seem to defy our expectations, creating a space seemingly without gravity, which is also one of the functions of painting. Ultimately, I combine my experiences with my thoughts, giving myself the freedom to suggest something conventionally real while presenting something that's actually impossible.
You say that urban spaces influence a lot of your works. What brought your focus to these artificial environments?
I spent a lot of time painting urban space, finding twists and turns, taking a familiar environment, and painting it from a new perspective. These days, I am a lot less focused on literal urban space as a subject for painting, though there is still much to be mined. However, all of what I create has the suggestion maybe it exists within a larger cosmopolitan space - the jungles I paint aren't necessarily jungles... they are simulations of jungles that exist within biodomes, zoos, etc., which exist within cities, which exist within the broader cultural fabric. I treat urban space as a stage, a template that can be disassembled and re-organized in paint to create meaning. There is always a stage within a stage, with the painting itself, perhaps, as the final stage. None of it's real.
I saw that outside of Montreal, Berlin is the other city where you have exhibited many times over your career. How did your relationship with Berlin and its art develop? Do you draw creative ideas from particular places?
After completing my MFA, I moved to Berlin, and I lived there for five and a half years. At the time, it was one of the few affordable large-scale artistic cities in Europe (not quite so affordable anymore). While it's inevitable that Berlin influenced me in multiple ways, it's curious that I've never made a painting that has anything seen in Berlin as source material. While I can't say the location where I live doesn't influence me, it seems to be the case that the activity that takes place within the confines of the studio is what dictates the direction of the work.
Berlin is a fascinating place to experience art as it's very much like the lab or the factory testing center. You'll see a lot of stuff that's not very good but also a lot of strangely incredible work. It's where ideas are tried out before they crawl out to the broader world. It's not an art market center, but it is a creative center. In any case, I very much enjoyed my time in Berlin and may live there yet again. Galerie Kremers represents me, so I maintain a Berlin presence in one form or another.
Can you talk a bit about your creative process when making a new artwork?
The genesis of everything is in the drawing. I rarely begin with an idea in mind of where things will take me. I draw random abstract, almost geometric, shapes until some assortment of these shapes connects in a way that suggests forward momentum. I'll then develop a composition over a sequence of further drawings until it feels like a painting may emerge out of it. I usually use bits and pieces from various photographs and videos, most of which I shoot myself, as reference points to replace some of the abstract elements. Therefore, while some people might look at one of the paintings and think I am copying a photograph or a view of something, what I am depicting is actually an impossible scene and the photographic/realistic elements simply serve as alibis for thoughts about abstract space.
As one can imagine, then, meaning is something that also comes into focus over a length of time, over the course of the process. Content follows form. My job is not to deliver a message of some kind but to create possibilities within the viewer.
What is currently inspiring you as an artist?
I'm just beginning a new body of work with links to some of my previous work, but it is actually a step into relatively new territory. While I mentioned my interest in modernism earlier on, I've also long held an undefined excitement for older Romantic or Baroque (particularly Flemish Baroque) art. The piles of bodies, objects, animals, and so on, always in motion, in an eternal struggle.. are wonderous. I've also been looking back, way back - to clay and stone sculpture (and have been making my own)... and way forward, as well, to A.I. technologies. A struggle between the past and the future. A proposition of permanence, degradation, hope, renewal, and uncertainty. This confrontation is inspiring me in my present body of work.
Do you have any advice for aspiring artists or beginner artists?
If you follow your interests, you'll rarely be led astray. Your interests will always guide you to do work that feels exciting and motivating. Eventually, and especially if you keep grinding, you'll realize that you've developed a language of your own, your own visual cosmos. Also, don't be too discouraged by failure, as most artists experience more failure than success. That said, it's all worth it so you can spend your life engaged with what interests you. Just keep making art.
