Jesper Nilsson Vartiainen

Artist and Behavioral Scientist

The art that Jesper makes can be described as stories, small narratives, sometimes some parts become photorealistic mixed with simple drawings. He then mixes that with a richness of detail that is almost hypnotic. Viewers tend to stop and look at the same image for a long time. The words they usually use to describe the pictures are that they are colorful and have a great deal of imagination. Then the people looking at the art start talking to eachother about all the details they see. They discuss what they see and what it means. When they talk with the artist they have an interpretation they want to discuss. The interpretations they make can shift from a figure they seem to have noticed to a philosophical discussion about time.

Jesper started his journey in art in his teens, from not being too interested in making pictures at all, to doing it all evenings. It is usually more common that it is the other way around, that you usually stop drawing and painting in your teens. This in connection with gaining an increasingly greater ability to look at things from the outside. When Jesper is asked why he did the opposite, he describes that there was a feeling of loneliness in his life. There were a feeling of alienation that pictures and making pictures could overcome. He didn't have many people to discuss the issues he thought were important. So he began to draw and observe based on the images that were available to him in his teenage years. It was popular culture in the late 80s and early 90s. It consisted of comic books, music magazines, MTV, album covers, fashion magazines, etc.

 

Education

Jesper followed an aesthetic practical program in high school. At the time, in the early 90s, it was an unusual program. He moved away from home, Orust, to study at the school in Trollhättan and thus he followed in his older brother's footsteps. Jesper describes it as a very exciting time and experienced it as very exciting to meet schoolmates with a completely different outlook on life than he was used to. He moved away from his aspiration to draw as photorealistic as possible to making art that went more into emotions. This by testing different colors and structures. At this time, he encountered surrealism, which changed him fundamentally. Dali and his symbolism particularly fascinated him.


After high school, he has a drive to develop more. He applies and gets into Domen artschool.
"Here I could test everything possible, conceptual ideas, abstract painting, free artistic processes, surrealism, poetry, filmmaking. But towards the end it got confusing. I lost my own subjective approach and at the same time I could express myself with enormous freedom. I lacked the ability to understand my own artistry while pushing myself forward”.
It all ended with him coming in for an interview at Konstfack. But well in the interview, he couldn't describe what he did.
“It was a very frustrating time where I felt very disoriented. It would take quite a long time before I found my way back to something that I felt I controlled or perhaps above all understood. Closer to 15 years”
He then worked for a few years, 2001-2004 in healthcare, and did some book illustration work for friends. But had no real drive towards anything.

In 2004, Jesper began his studies in behavioral science. At the end of his studies, he took courses in Digital Storytelling and Creative Learning. Which were educational subjects but with a focus on creation. Among other things, Seymor Papert was an inspirer who connected creativity with mathematics. Something that made Jesper's artistry click and the connection to behavioral science and the theories surrounding radical aesthetics meant that he understood parts that had been difficult for him to understand before. Creation became logical again, or rather, he understood the logical in understanding man's need to be a illogical and irrational being.

Behavioral science made it possible to understand art in a new way and his own place as an individual in the artistic world.
"I could now understand things I created at art school that I didn't understand before, even though I had left the part of the artistic process that was current at the time. "

He got hooked on the narrative in the courses but had no interest in explaining it in words. It came instead in the form of pictures, which gave him greater freedom.

Exhibitions

Moroliviagården was an exhibition together with another artist. He still felt confused and was in a cognitive process that was not complete. The pictures were mostly abstract landscapes, but they lacked both focus and goal. The exhibition was flat, but it had certain traits towards a more narrative painting. Jesper had not yet found the individual narrative power that would become so pronounced in his art.
Kajutan Orust artgallery. About 10 paintings had a clearer character towards the narrative. But he couldn't quite let go of his photorealistic style. It was a split exhibition. However, you could see that even these pictures had stories and a dreamlike shimmer about them. There were often leaves or trees in all the pictures. His strong connection to trees and plants began to develop. There were connections to the various behavioral science theories in many of the images.

One image is a little girl gesturing with her hands to tell something. She has a pacifier in her mouth so you understand that she can't explain herself very well in words. But behind her is a world in color where there is a castle and a toy car. The second part of the image consists of a woman holding a couple of books and is black and white. There is a toy car in black and white. It has a string that winds to the woman. The car is inside the colorful part, behind the child, in the picture. And in the black and white picture there are building blocks that are in color. The idea is that the black and white part consists of a logically constructed system and the colorful part of an irrationally constructed system.

After the Exhibition at Kajutan, the active artistry did not receive the same time and focus as earlier in Jesper's life.

The exhibition at Café Samt will be a way to establish artistry. But at the same time you can see that he sticks to the narrative. However, the images are not so connected to academic theories as before, the development is more towards developing a narrative about feelings and things that cannot really be described with any kind of words.

In the exhibition at Brobygård, you can see a more united artist. The focus is stronger and you can see in the paintings that they have a stronger purpose. Each picture has a strong character and that they want to have said something.
"You can see a connection with all forms of art that I have produced in the past. There are still parts that are more photorealistic in the images. At the same time, there is a narrative. However, it is more connected to people and subjects than to theories as they were before.”
The artist's personal consideration of what exists is included more than before. In that way, you can say that he gets his artistry together that he started in his teens.

He tells himself again and again with the images and feelings that are in his surroundings. This previously became a collision when he encountered the art at the dom art school which he did not really understand. Then he develops this collision into a more conscious experience of the art he makes with the support of behavioral science theories. Slowly but surely, he seems to understand his own individuality in art. At the same time, the artist has also left the artistic world and uses it more and more to describe different narratives that he encounters in his own life world. He has also left his theories behind when making pictures. Instead, they both get to lie more like a background raster in the images.

 

The Present and the Future

So where do you get your inspiration today?

"I would probably say that it comes from a break of images and from finding the mystery in everyday life. The artists that have places in my consciousness for now (2021) are Bauer, Dali, Alexander Jansson and John Kenn Mortensen. But underlying is always man's connection to nature and our human being and its inherent conflicts. "

How do you plan to proceed in your Artistship?

"Yes, the process will never end. Developing is both painful and boring. Apart from the fact that it's hugely fun and exciting, of course. I hope I am brave enough not to petrify my process but to take the development as it comes. Financially, I hope that I will be able to afford to do more with my art in the future. How much I don't really know, I'm not sure I want to let go of professional life. There are too many exciting things happening in what inspires in life. Otherwise, of course, there are practical things like learning things that enable more artistic expression. Then where the art goes... I let life decide that. I hope that I'm brave enough to be vulnerable and open to what's to come.”