Jake Berthot, Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Le Witt, Brice Marden, David Salle, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly.

American contemporary art has had a great impact on the visual arts in Europe and the Nordic countries. Yet, not many people in Finland and Norway have had the opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview of the results of American contemporary art. Nor have they had many opportunities to be directly confronted with American contemporary art and to find out which features of it have particularly appealed to Finnish and Norwegian artists.

For many European artists, the notion of "American contemporary art" has been an emotionally colored dream of vitality and creativity. And for artists who have had the opportunity to pursue this dream, it has been an important incentive, opening up new perspectives and unleashing their own creative power. But, on the other hand, there are also many who have been blinded.

"American Contemporary Art" is not the clearest concept one could imagine for an exhibition. It is of course not a uniform artistic movement with distinctive features that can be demonstrated objectively and untamed by a single exhibition. Nevertheless, it can be argued that all the artists selected for this exhibition have made significant contributions and have contributed decisively to the overall picture we have been able to form of American art in the 1970s and 80s. The main emphasis in the exhibition is on the individual participant's latest production. Abstract expressionism, Pop Art and related phenomena are not represented; an exhibition on these themes is being planned and will be presented at a later date. The internal coherence of the exhibition is sharpened by the use of contrasts, in order to relate to a fundamental characteristic of American visual art. American society can be perceived as unrestrained, noisy and ecstatic; but there also exists an intimate, intellectual and meditative America. In this exhibition we find artists who work in a style that tends towards minimalism. Neo-figurative painting seems to remain equally important.

Furthermore, the exhibition represents artists who claim that "what you see is what you are" and their work has no other content. Parallel to these, there are artists who address fundamental social issues about American society from a moral standpoint. Some of the artists participating in the exhibition have had the urban jungle of New York as an important source of inspiration, but there are also artists who have retained their blissful American identity despite long stays in Europe.

Steinar Gjessing - Kunstnernes hus