janne laine (finland)

1. tell us about your everyday environment,
your hobbies and lifestyle

2. what do you see as the point of your works?

3. tell us your thoughts on the problems printmaking is facing today ? what might they be and where's the solution?

4. do you use computers in your work,
and if so, how do they help you and what do you think of them?

5. what do you think are the best and worst sides of print art?

6. what does printmaking give and mean to you?

7. where did you get the idea from to take part
in the tallinn print triennial?

8. your favourite artists?

i'm a 31 year old finnish artist. i graduated from the tampere school of art and communication in 1995. i didn't have my first private exhibition until 1997, because it took a while to figure out what kind of art should i be doing! it was already pretty evident in my early years that i wanted to be an artist, but it didn't seem to be a very reasonable profession, so i went in a way through all the other options before the conclusion became quite definite. the last confirmation came when i started work as an art printer in the graphic workshop himmelblau in tampere 1992. that's the place i'm working even today. in the beginning it was so easy and fun to be in art school but it rather quickly became more and more frustrating, so i started to spend more time at work, where i was actually learning somthing. there i was working with the best finnish artists and while i was etching their plates i tried to figure out their needs and thoughts. that was my journey to the real art world. it couldn't be further from the safe, unreal environment of art school. when you work with another artist you expand your way of seeing things and start to approach your own ideas from a different direction. the interaction is very rewarding. of course the starting point to do your own work of art grows - sometimes it is almost too high - but the more your professional skill is growing, the easier it is to see the lines of your own artistic tendency. in himmelblau i have to know all the intaglio technics to do the plates with the artists, but there's only one technique i'm really in love with. that's heliogravure, where you transfer your photographic images through light sensitive materials to the copper plates by etching them. this technique is pretty difficult: there're plenty of ways to do it wrong and you never know exactly what will come up from the etching trough. and that makes it so interesting. you can push the photographic image further in the directions you want. and, because the image is etched onto the copper plate, it gives you endless possibilities to continue developing the image with other intaglio techniques. in these heliogravures the feel of material is very different to photos. the images are darker and there's more texture in them. i'm also interested in showing my works in a different way, not just by hanging the pictures on the wall. that's why lately i've been doing 3-dimensional objects. in a way, i try to bring graphic prints, photos and pieces of sculptures closer together. i don't consider myself a graphic artist or photographer; rather, something inbetween. the most important thing, however, is to just be - and feel to be - an artist; nothing more, nothing less. at the moment i don't seem to have time for anything else except art. after my full-time job at himmelblau i try to do some of my own graphics or other projects. any spare time left in the evenings and weekends is reserved for the rajataide assosiation. i'm a founder member of the assosiation and its purpose is to give young artists in tampere the chance to show their works in a gallery or to participate in various projects. the rajatila gallery was founded in 1997, rajataide in 1996. everything is based on voluntary work. the founder members are a group who graduated from art school together. instead of wondering what to do, where to have an exhibition, why everything is so hard and so on, we decided to do something about it. together we managed to keep on doing art, and the assosiation we founded went on and is now well-known and appreciated. in most of my pictures i try to represent the difficulties in relationships, the numbness and emptiness in them, and my reflections on today's lonely way of life. in a way they are stills from the movie my closest friends and i are living. my recent pictures were taken in iceland, where the landscapes are cloaked with steam and volcanic gas. those pictures are unreal and silent, and the visible and invisible border each other, before or long after mankind (?). i don't feel the urge to present any great feelings or idealistic points of views; rather, i concentrate on silence and things left unspoken. there are (a?) few artists who have had an influence on me; gerhard richter, francis bacon, cindy sherman, damien hirsch (hirst?), roni horn, robert mapplethorpe and christian boltanski... printmaking now seems to be going through a phase where everything has to be gigantic, as though the size of the work is the end in itself. there doesn't have to be a competition between paintings, sculptures or graphics. the result - the work of art itself - should be enough to determine its value. nowadays you can use whatever media you want, as long as you remember that the newest aren't always the best. you shouldn't forget history and the know-how beyond those older techniques. i got the information about tallinn print triennial trough the society of finnish graphic artists. i'm proud to be one of the participants and in finland, tallinn print triennial has a very high repu