Concealment as a Method

Niklas Ingelius’s works are built on a reflection in which the painted surface is regarded as a ‘cloak of invisibility’ that simultaneously conceals and reveals. In the exhibition the painting has not been conceived as an image but rather as a detached surface. It is like a veil that places itself between the viewer and the unknown.

At the centre of the works is the relationship between the painted surface and the physical form of the ground, the frame, and the surface itself. The paintings are not content to be static windows, but strive towards active movement and presence. Optical surfaces, image rasters and camouflage textures challenge the viewer’s perception: what appears uniform from a distance, fragments up close into details, vibrations and disturbancesThis glitch-like movement makes the paintings feel organic, changing with the viewer’s movements and how the light falls on the surface.

The works are abstract and playfully experimental in their forms, reflecting on transparency. What can be revealed from behind or within the painting? The idea of a canvas through which one can potentially see everything makes the painting like a portal. It is an invitation to step, for a moment, somewhere else, to a place where the painting not only depicts something, but makes space for hidden thoughts and new worlds.

The camouflage theme plays with invisibility. As in nature or technology, protective colour and raster pattern can merge an object with its surroundings, while simultaneously awakening curiosity about what lurks beneath the covered surface. These paintings are attempts to reach that in-between space: they are physical objects in the room, but their visual language reaches towards the infinite.

Niklas Ingelius (b. 1992) is a Helsinki-based artist and Master of Fine Arts. He works primarily with constructed grounds and painting. In his work he has immersed himself in a long-term painting process, where repeated transparent layers of paint gradually create optically and organically shifting areas.

His most recent solo exhibitions were Nexus in Commotion at HAM gallery 2022 and Garden in Motion at tm-galleria 2021. He has been a member of the Finnish Painters’ Union since 2017, of the Lahti Artists’ Association since 2017, a board member of Dimensio rf since 2016, and chairman since 2023. His works can be found in the collections of Kiasma, HAM, the Saastamoinen Foundation, the State, HUS and Lahti Art Museum.