About
The collages are of intimate scale. They are intuitive, accretions of dense, mesmerizing, stimulated fields of meticulously cut paper sourced from archaic books.
I initiate my process with a ground of subtly variegated paper building layer upon layer of intricately contoured fragments. Fragments found sifting through all kinds of outmoded textbooks, encyclopedias, leather fillers, tomes on the natural sciences, medical instruction, technical manuals and the like. The intriguing, enigmatic accrue in orderly accretion. Lyric improvisations from the natural biological world intersect with scientific and mechanical elements evoking otherworldly tableaus, suggestive of the macro- and microcosmos. Schematics, diagrams, cross-sections, wings of a butterfly, engines, structures, scaffolding, scientific apparatus, bodily organs, planetary orbs, geodes, bones, leaves, shells—combine to reshape. Deconstructed excisions cut to abstraction, linear, tone, and texture accumulate—each addition determines that which follows in continuous rhythmic flow. Recontextualized, formed with immediacy, and imbued with timelessness.
Selections are made with a practiced eye—finding inspiration in antiquated printing aberrations, odd or inartful renderings, and engraved optical eccentricities. I began acquiring old, discarded volumes long before their possibilities unfolded, attracted by the visual beauty and richness, by the soft warmth of the patina, and by the fragility inherent to this arcane printed matter—its evocative obsolescence. Qualities that resonate of another age—an authenticity—that I desire to preserve and channel.
Pictured here, September 2023 at the LUCID Art Foundation Artist Residency, Inverness, California. Photo: Sina Dehghani
Awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2004 and 2007. My work is in the collection of The LUCID Art Foundation, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (mfa), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), The Crocker Art Museum Sacramento, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) and in many private collections, and has been presented at: The ADAA Art Show, Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, Houston Fine Art Fair, CA Boom–Dwell on Design Los Angeles, Pulse Art Fair (Miami and New York), LA Art Show, Works on Paper–The Park Avenue Armory.
Mentions:
Melissa Stern [artist, editor] writes “The astoundingly detailed collage work of Maritta Tapanainen delights and toys with the viewer. They are so precisely assembled that it is, at first glance, difficult to be sure if they are constructed rather than drawn. These transcendent collages are assembled out of hundreds of pieces of found paper. Working within the palate of black and white, she draws out scores of subtle and rich tones. The soft patina of vintage papers and multiple shades of black ink reveal the rich variety of colors that that we tend to think of as “monochromatic.” Her pieces draw from natural history, science and music, creating a world that is lyrical and lively. Her ability to weave together these disparate elements is no less than masterful.” —Posit 21 - a journal of literature and art, Spring 2019
Derek Owens [Professor, St. John’s University] writes “Maritta Tapanainen gets her source material from vintage medical volumes, botanical encyclopedias, and technical manuals, and her process is as meticulous as that of any collagist: the textbook illustrations are carefully pulled from their homes and layered on a grid of vintage papers (a method not just meticulous, but mysterious—how she preserves the integrity of these tiny, intricate pieces is hard to fathom). But these are more than just masterful depictions of imaginal universes. Blunt as it might sound, the care and detail of this work points to what might simply be described as love. A powerful love for the physical universe; a love for the elegant, fragile detail.” —Vices Peculiar to These Eclectics: Contemporary Collage exhibition catalog, 2015.
Peter Frank [art critic and curator] writes “Tapanainen has long woven dense mats of disparate but similarly textured depictions, providing them just enough space to suggest galaxies or fossil beds or views into microscopic worlds teeming with nervously elegant protozoa.” —Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Morphology exhibition catalog, 2008.
Stuart Denenberg [art entrepreneur] likens experiencing to a diatomaceously scaled world, observing “Tapanainen is orchestrating new music; she is in control of a magical nanosphere; in these works we are gently allowed to join the dance.” —Couturier Gallery, From There to Here, Collage 1992–2007, exhibition catalog 2007, “Protozoan Poetics”.