Juri Markkula’s works feature plenty of art historical references. The encounter with Claude Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral was an early source of inspiration for Markkula, who was enthralled by the older master’s painting. Nude Ground (2020) by Juri Markkula was acquired for the Corona Collection, an initiative to support the Swedish art scene during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fascinated by how the shifting light influences the details of the building, Monet, in his paintings, displayed the same love of the surface that we find in Juri Markkula’s work. The thick layers of paint make the paintings an architectural experience, a feeling of being able to trace the contours of the Cathedral with your fingertips on the canvas. The materiality of Markkulas’ Cathedral series creates an immediate intimacy, a kind of physicality without human content.
Markkula describes his work as an exploration of the dynamic relationship between viewer and physical materials. The flesh-coloured and seemingly soft surfaces of CNC-milled polyurethane in Nude Ground takes on organic forms of enlarged leaves decaying on the ground. A significant difference between Nude Ground and Monet’s Cathedral paintings is that the former’s production was completely dependent on the nature of daylight while Markkula worked with 3D scans of the ground and advanced computer programmes.
The form of Nude Ground may be reminiscent of the Baroque predilection for ornamentation; however, the arrangement of the fallen leaves brings to mind something more monumental, perhaps the folds in the Virgin Mary’s garment in Michelangelo’s Pietà.
A small corner of the dramatic event and a nod to earlier art that wanted to bring humans into closer contact with the divine.
Withering leaves is a well-known metaphor for the impermanence of all living things. So also in Nude Ground, a bit like in the psalm:
“All meat is hay, everything flees here,
and soon the grass will wither.
With you alone, Lord,
is an imperishable being.”
Nothing lasts forever except for God – and perhaps industrial materials.
Liza Jernberg,
Collection Administrator
Artist Biography Juri Markkula
Juri Markkula (b. 1970 in Turku, Finland) is based in Visby on the island of Gotland. He works with exhibitions and public art commissions locally, nationally and internationally.
