ARCHITECTURE OF PICTURE – Sami Lukkarinen

The “Architecture of Picture” exhibition presents paintings by Sami Lukkarinen completed between the years 2001 – 2003. The starting point of the paintings is modernist Finnish church architecture and international functional architecture. The series is a continuation on Lukkarinen’s project examining the relationship between digital image and architecture.

The churches Lukkarinen has painted were built during the 1950’s and 1980’s and are located in the suburbs across Finland. The churches selected are stylistically and environmentally interesting and represent to Lukkarinen the highest quality of suburban architecture.

A central tool in Lukkarinen’s working process is the Photoshop software in which he chooses the image he will paint and composes it. Lukkarinen works on the image by reducing the information on it, making the pixels appear clearly. By increasing the pixels he renders visible the computer’s logic to calculate the colour information. In the final picture there are from 800 to 2000 pixels and hundreds of different colours. Lukkarinen seeks to copy the colours as separate pixels onto the canvas as accurately as possible. An important analogic element is present in his work through the shortcomings and errors of the process.

“I firmly believe that digital image and digitalisation offer new technical as well as contextual possibilities for painting. In my paintings the different colour systems of digital image and painting meet as well as their immateriality and materiality. In the final painting I seek to find a balance between modern architecture, digital image and oil painting”, explains Lukkarinen.

***

Sami Lukkarinen (born 1976 in Jyväskylä) graduated in 2001 from the Department of Media Studies, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. In connection with the exhibition, a catalogue ‘Modern Churches’, presenting Lukkarinen’s works is available from the bookshop.