Rainer Paananen focuses on his fascination with sound through the snapping of metal and woollen lines from his self-made string instruments on light-sensitive materials. Paananen captures these interactions as a means for recording not merely a specific moment but a score of sounds that are visually arranged together to form a conceptual composition. He creates his colors by combining different materials, chalk, fire, water and light with his instrumental play. These self-made instruments become his brush and he uses them to draw on these assorted substances in his pursuit to find their photographic voice.

 

Influenced by Alvin Lucier’s piece, Music On A Long Thin Wire, where an oscillating metal wire creates its ever-changing drone in space, Paananen uses his instruments to detune themselves while playing them. Through his performances he seeks out a meditative state where time vanishes. He essentially reduces music to its most basic form–silence and color.

 

Paananen’s artistic process is largely based on the subconscious reflections of his mind. He notes he is intuitively led towards a physical expression throughout this act of creation. A serene moment of closeness and experience within nature, such as the sky or horizon, the ocean or landscape, leads to a fascinating assemblage of coloration that is gradually leveled into a density of colors, and serves to be just as an intense an inspiration to Rainer Paananen as a personal event or heartfelt sentiment.