Mikko Ijäs was born in Jyväskylä, Finland in 1978. He is a Doctor of Arts student in the University of Arts and Design Helsinki (TaiK), where he received a Masters of Arts degree in visual culture in 2006. Ijäs's works are in several collections and his works has been shown in several private and group shows in Finland and abroad. Ijäs lectures frequently on art theory and art history in TaiK, but also in the Finnish Open University. Ijäs also writes articles and commentaries to different publications and tries to update most of these texts here on his website. Ijäs lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Ijäs’s artistic work involves paintings, photographs and installations.

My general idea is that art history is possible to see as a cultural evolution. If we can understand the neural, cultural and social reasons of the upper Paleolithic cave paintings we could also understand contemporary art better. My main research and artistic interest is the theme The Eye, Hand and Mind (a birds eye view to the evolution of art). I'm trying to find answers to the question that has risen from my own experience as a draughtsman: why the upper Paleolithic cave paintings are not painted from live model? Why there are only few examples of the use of live model in art history? Practically the first ones are sculptures from ancient Egypt, but the reign of realistic or "photographic" pictures did not start until the Renaissance era. What was the social demand for the use of live model in the Renaissance era? Why it was the only way people made pictures until the dawn of chemical photography in the mid nineteenth century, when impressionism and finally cubism questioned this way of making pictures.

My argument is: First: to use your hand to measure proportions of the model is a very demanding effort for your brain, and it would not be your first choice for making an image. It is just too difficult. Second: There must be a neurological reason why nonrealistic images are more pleasing for our mind. Our mind likes exaggerations and simplifications, but there has to be order and usually it is determined by social preference. This second reason has been studied extensively by neuroscientists especially Indian born Vilayanur Ramachandran. Third argument is that human beings are chunks of meat moving trough time and space, and they tend to have two eyes. The experience of being a human cannot be reduced to a Cyclops point of view that has been imprisoned inside a stationary time capsule. This last argument derives mainly from the pragmatistic philosophy.

The perspective theory changed visual perception and the tradition of pictorial representation of space. Pictures became realistic, but in a mechanical way. Pictures became photographic. According to artist David Hockney the reason was invention and accessibility of lenses and concave mirrors used for optical projection. Whatever the reason was – the change did really happen. The era of photographic image lasted roughly from the year 1440 all the way to the invention and public use of chemical photography in the late nineteenth century. The modernist painters where the final reason for the change in spatial experience in a painting. Matisse did it with color and Picasso with form. What was the reason for all of this, why? Why depiction of space changed in the Renaissance era? Was there different kind of views of space in other mediums besides pictures?

The worldview changed in many ways during the Renaissance and the modern era was born. This social, ideological, religious and economic change is visible in the visual arts – t is visible in the pictures. Pictures changed almost photographic in Italy and in the Flemish area within very short time frame – only few decades. Idea of space and time changed. Use of chiaroscuro and central perspective became a standard in visual arts. It is visible in the pictures, but is it anywhere else? This is the thing that bothered me for some time, actually. Then I realized that the change is visible in the pictures, but also in written stories! It is written in books as well. In the stories before the Renaissance people could be thousands of years old, they can speak with gods and they can travel to hell and back. Dante’s Divina Commedia people can tell us what is it like in Hell. T. S. Eliot has noted that: “Dante lived in an age in which men still saw visions [...] the trick of which we have forgotten.” 

I have sketched a rough categorization of three different types of making pictures. Each category uses different principles of depicting the outside world:

Renaissance image – in this category we can fit almost all photographs and pictures made using photographic projections.

Experience image – Image that shows human experience or the presence of two eyed chunk of meat moving through time and space and interacting with environment. This is what humans are in technical terms.

Imaginary image – image based on visions and produced without visual model. Imaginary stories  (like Dante’s Divina Commedia) are literal equivalents to this category.

Contact:
tel: +358-50-9122944       
email: mikko.j.ijas@gmail.com

Gallery Maud Piquion in Berlin, Germany represents Mikko Ijäs in Europe

MAUD PIQUION
Brunnenstrasse 38
10115 Berlin