Created in 1992
Acrylic on canvas, 115 cm x 115 cm.
Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation’s Collection
Sofia Wilkman: Red Sea Mountain

Sofia Wilkman (born 1956) is a Helsinki-based visual artist and painter. She graduated as a painter from the Fine Arts Academy of Finland in 1984 and as a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. In her work, Wilkman seeks continuity. She produces serial works, and the various series are also interconnected. No individual work is intended as transformative of the world, but individual works should be seen as part of a larger whole.
Wilkman sees her works as open spaces the viewer can step into, wander in, and exit again.
Attention to one’s own thoughts and sensations is characteristic of Wilkman’s mode of working. The artist works on the paintings for extended periods of time before she sets out to paint them on canvas. She reduces elements and uses colour, line and surfaces with consideration. She strives to express her subject in an extremely reduced fashion. Wilkman’s works leave “space for thoughts”. The viewer may discover in them something that takes their thoughts to somewhere where new thoughts and emotions emerge.
Colour and line – one of which usually dominates the work – are the reduced basic elements in Sofia Wilkman’s art.
Colours may be subtle or considerably bright and strong. Lines may be nearly evanescent or dominate the work. The works are often based on a discovered text that supports the work. However, the works are not narrative in that they would reveal the story behind them. The artist does not give us opinions or answers but evokes questions.
Wilkman frequently uses black in her works. The graphic colour functions as a code or trace of sorts.
The artist rather talks about ”blackness” instead of ”black”. Blackness refers to a kind of trace that, for the artist, produces an impression of ash. Ash has gone through a process that has profoundly changed it.