Among Europeans, Finnish culture stands for melancholy and despair, for the emotional awkwardness portrayed in the films of the Kaurismäki brothers. And for unrestrained drinking. In Robert Lucander’s paintings, by contrast, one encounters an urbane, cool Finland, both youth- and style-conscious. His works are situated at the fault line where pop culture’s shimmering surfaces dissolve into a peculiar emptiness as monochrome planes of color.

Lucander’s earlier series “Up and Down and Back Again,” 1994–95, was already concerned with the relationship between representation and the painting’s material