Heat, 2007
Toumas Laitinen (1976 FI)
Trained at College of Art, Helsinki, Finland
Lives and works in Helsinki
Tuomas Laitinen works with pictures on plexiglass mounted on illuminated boxes. His treatment of the glass embraces drawing, painting and digital photo techniques but he can also resort to using an angle grinder and drills. The impulses for his art extend to film noir, literature, music, photography and strip cartoons.
The magical in Tuomas Laitinen’s pictures is conveyed by the way the light moves within the images. Inside the lighting box are several layers of images and lamps, slowly moving to and fro. This shifting of light and shade emphasises still further the narrative character of Laitinen’s works. They invite us to start fantasising our own stories as to what they are really all about.
Tuomas Laitinen’s pictorial idiom often refers to the medium of film and we can detect inspiration from thrillers and tragicomic or melodramatic films. His triptych
There is no Drama without a Briefcase (2007) includes a classic intrigue from the cinema – a suitcase with unknown content. It is accompanied by a raven which appears to carry a message that it refuses to reveal and obscure meetings are suggested, taking place behind closed doors and windows.
Heat, 2007
Light box installation, 140 x 160 x 20 cm
The Night of the Living Dead Drunk, 2008
Light box installation, 140 x 160 x 20 cm
I’m not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You), 2008
Light box installation, 60 x 60 x 20 cm
Keeper of the Flame, 2008
Light box installation, 60 x 60 x 20 cm