29 Sep 2011

Jaakko Mattila: Lowest Common Denominator at the James Hockey & Foyer Galleries

Jaakko Mattila: Lowest Common Denominator.
Private View: 7 October 2011 6.30 - 8.30pm
Exhibition opening from The Ambassador of Finland, Mr. Pekka Huhtaniemi


From 7 October – 17 December 2011, the James Hockey & Foyer Galleries, UCA Farnham, are hosting an exciting new exhibition: 'Lowest Common Denominator' by Jaakko Mattila. Based in Oulu, Finland, Mattila is a UCA Fine Art graduate whose mesmerising oeuvre in oil, watercolour and print is receiving increasing international acclaim.

Curated by Christine Kapteijn, UCA Galleries' Curator & Manager, 'Lowest Common Denominator' expresses Mattila's aspiration to simplify painting to the bare minimum: 'I would like to make visually interesting art global regardless of the cultural background or social status of the viewer. The work is aimed towards extreme mediocrity.'

'Lowest Common Denominator' brings together a diverse range of media allowing individual pieces to unfold from a singular perspective. A series of large scale landscapes will be shown together for the first time. Accompanying the exhibition is the latest in the series of focus publications from the Galleries: Space 04. The publication includes an in-depth conversation between Jaakko Mattila and Christine Kapteijn, an essay by art critic Veiko Halmetoja and a sumptuous visual catalogue of many of Mattila's works.

Homing in on the innate and visceral nature of the dynamics between art and viewer, Jaakko's work appeals to a shared intuitive connection with form, colour and light. Peculiar to Finland, Jaakko's sensibility to nature and light is distilled in the works. An energy greater and more mysterious than the sum of constituents is palpable in the apparent simplicity of forms. Stripped bare and reduced to essentials this impulse feeds into a deeply spiritual and abstract strand of art found in all corners of the globe. Jaakko's is an art to be experienced regardless of the background of the viewer. At the James Hockey & Foyer Galleries this commitment towards the universal accessibility of high quality art is core to our programme.

Alongside the exhibition, the James Hockey & Foyer Galleries are running an outreach programme with the Sandy Hill Detached Youth Project funded by the Farnham South Street Trust. With the South East Physics Network a series of collaborative workshops in local schools are planned to examine the artistic inspiration inherent in the physicality of Mattila's colour and light studies.