My artistry is strongly connected to natural experiences and inner landscapes. I am interested in conveying a personal experience of time, memories and nature.

The works can be seen as surreal, abstract and emotional.

The exhibition will feature painting, sculpture and poetry.

When images speak, the poetry of the wonderful is born
Text: Emma Lundenmark

To enter Maija Lempiäinen Nyrén's poetic images is to see. To want to see and to explore the very essence of what makes us want to create. The exhibition "Under the surface the sea screams" mixes paintings, sculpture and poetry.

Maija has a depth in her creation that is almost timeless, it is eternal. It is time-consuming. An idea can take a decade to fall into place, and the words were no exception. Everything is a deep dive into the subconscious. The works spring from an underwater theme, where the Finnish names for different types of algae have provided further inspiration from both drowning and ecstasy. We move between childhood memories, natural sensations and the feeling itself in the painting process.

The exhibition also presents a book with both text and images, as Maija's paintings one day began to speak in poems. Hundreds of pictures and sculptures have become hundreds of poems over the years, and the book presents a selection of these. Maija's poetry is images, in the same way that her art is poetry. Everything is one, everything deepens and becomes an echo of her own poetic and artistic endeavor.

To enter Maija's art is to go so far that even one is transformed. The created becomes something real. The space of the poems and the spaces that the paintings open become the beauty that colors existence in general. A new world emerges through her poetic gaze; A world where it is dark beneath the surface but where we still try to meet in the beautiful. Everything is ephemeral and everything is eternal in Maija's wonderful visual worlds.

Maija Lempiäinen Nyrén
Born 1957, Uusimaa, Finland
Lives and works in Stockholm

Education
1981-1987 Konstfack, Stockholm
2017-2018 Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm

Separate exhibitions, selection
1993, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2007 Gallery Argo, Stockholm
1998 Gallery Leena Kuumola, Helsinki, Finland
2004 Tandem, Culture House, Stockholm
2005 Art Gallery, Sörmlands Museum, Nyköping
2008 Gallery Graphic Society, Stockholm; Rättviks Art Gallery
2010 Gallery Katariina, Helsinki / Helsinki, Finland
2012 Cupido Gallery, Stockholm
2024 Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm

Represented
The National Arts Council
Stockholm Art Council
Swedish embassies in Lebanon, South Africa, Slovenia, Malaysia and Kenya
County councils & municipalities around Sweden