Because they are illuminated by divine light, Orthodox icons never depict shadows. Starry skies are only allowed if the icon depicts an actual event, and faces are painted looking straight ahead or at a slight angle. All saints should have a halo, but never eyelashes. The paint is applied in layers and in a specific order, starting from the darkest tone and up to the lightest.
These rigid standards are the result of hundreds of years of intense and serious tradition, but what determines whether an icon is successful or not is not its technical level. According to the Orthodox Church, the icon is an instrument for prayer, and its essential task is to evoke the presence of God. If the execution is too brilliant, the viewer risks being distracted by detail and surface.
Elina Merenmies’s retrospective Everything Shows at Turku Art Museum audaciously encourages us to interpret her work via Christian dogma and (art) history. The introductory text states plainly: “Orthodoxy is a defining aspect of Merenmies’s life” manifested in “daily prayers, reading the biographies of the saints of the Orthodox Church, and painting [traditional] icons.” Even though Merenmies is one of Finland’s most popular painters – and despite the fact that the Orthodox church, for historical reasons, is relatively visible in Finnish culture – this is far from common knowledge. Merenmies work could hardly be described as either gentle or disciplined, and iconography and gentle prayer seem far away from the expressive painting on display in Turku.
“Grotesque” is an adjective regularly associated with Merenmies’s dramatic ink paintings depicting solemn people – often obscured by somber roots or jet-black manes of hair – gazing out from the pale surface of the paper. Her paintings in colour are softer and milder despite recurring motifs such as vague figures or forests of bare trees with branches like nervous systems. Whatever the technique, darkness is always present. But is the darkness a benign and natural dusk, or does it represent desolation, the kind of evil found in fairy tales? Everything Shows comes down in favour of the former, of darkness as the prerequisite of light.
To emphasise this, the extensive exhibition opens with a work whose subject is unequivocally Christian. In the massive tempera and oil painting Heavenly Host (2022), angels in red robes appear in the sky above a lugubrious forest. They sing to the Madonna, who is seated on a throne supported by a bird, holding the baby Jesus. The aesthetic influence of Orthodox iconography is palpable; it is as if a Byzantine mirage is floating before me. The painting is sincere, even pious, yet cannot be dismissed as kitsch. It is a bold statement, not because Christianity is provocative, but because its imagery can easily seem watered-down and weak.
Next, the show makes a sudden U-turn. The angels aren’t followed by more Christian symbols, but by utterly explosive paintings whose motifs transcend the norms of organised religion. The light and fire that Merenmies paints is almost blinding, and the cumulative energy of the first room is nothing less than seismic. The definitive antithesis of Heavenly Host’s spiritual vision is Meteorite (2023–24), where flames slam down from a piercingly blue sky. Yet it doesn’t seem to depict the Apocalypse, but a natural occurrence in the life cycle of a planet – destruction and regeneration at the same time. The paintings nearby all have titles like Flame (2021–22), The Burning (2022), and Bonfire (2022–24). Burning figures are mixed with swirling sparks of red and orange, but there is nothing satanic about it. The fire is redemptive, not diabolical.
The works are not arranged chronologically, but according to the logic of myth. After the opening cascade of flames, fragile new crops sprout from the black ashes. The red-clad angels that once hovered above forests are replaced by pale figures just barely emerging from puffy cloud formations in works such as Victor (2016–19) and Soaring Aloft Upon(2016). People appear in the forms of seekers and witches dressed in headscarves. Everything seems to stem from – or, at least, have been gathered in – the same universe.
The oil and tempera paintings are interspersed by paintings in ink on paper in which Merenmies approaches death head-on. The passage of time is depicted in long hair and gnarled branches. At times, there are elements of more mundane horror objects such as a mummified corpse (Pile of Bones, 2019) or a hideously evil grinning bear (A Teddy That Has Gone Through Some Rough Times, 2024). In her use of ink, the artist alternates between thin, precise lines and broad, watery brushstrokes giving the impression that the works are created intuitively in the moment, without preparatory sketches or self-censorship. There is an illusion of unfiltered emotionality and haphazardness, as if the ink paintings had somehow emerged by themselves.
What appeals to me is how comfortable Merenmies is with the representational idiom. She fearlessly skirts the edges of storybook illustration and makes it seem easy to create figurative fantasies for adults. In this she is reminiscent of the English poet and painter William Blake (1757–1827), who, albeit with a different aesthetic, had a similar penchant for cascading flames and celestial beings. Like Blake, Merenmies depicts beauty as something terrifying (and vice versa). Take, for example, works like A Joyous Grave (2015–22) or Summer Night (Gethsemane) (2016); the titles alone give a sense of dissonance, something sinister combined with something beautiful.
At Turku Art Museum, a theme emerges in Merenmies’s work that I had not previously noted. The selection of works and the rhythm of the display emphasise grace, a concept that feels extremely alien in the world of contemporary art. What use does the modern atheist have for such a vaguely defined theological term? The show provides no answer, but I find it comforting to see that, despite the surrounding darkness, people don’t seem to suffer in her paintings. Not because they have submitted to God, but because of the constant company they can expect in this life: small flowers, colourful leaves, bushy shrubs, and birds flying free – precisely the mundane things that, according to traditional doctrine, should not be depicted in Orthodox icons.
