JUKKA KORKEILA: MINÄ EN KUULU VAIN ITSELLENI 1.9. - 2-10.2011
I don’t belong solely to myself, we also belong to each-other. Nothing or nobody can be owned. Everything, to the last oxygen atom, is shared or borrowed. There are only bodies and materia and nothing is constant. Only light prevails. (Jukka Korkeila)
Kalhama&Piippo has the pleasure of opening the new gallery with Jukka Korkeila’s solo exhibition that strongly takes hold of both mind and space. Korkeila is known as an artist who boldly brakes boundaries in both in the content of his images and the tradition of painting. In the new oil paintings of this exhibition he highlights the recycling of images and layering, waking the viewer to consider the cyclic nature of all that is.
We leave traces in life, traces that outlive us - perhaps in a changed shape and meaning. Life is limited, but to what extent is it really perishable even though materia disappears, Korkeila asks. Korkeila’s exhibition is crystalized in a light- and space installation that glows intensively violet colored, framed in by the new oil paintings. The installation which massively takes hold of the space, represents temporality. The minimalist excecution, the bright light element and intensity of colour achieve a contrast that bears a strong transcendental symbolism – of being on the borderline.
A painting covering the whole space, which viewers enter, reveals again the artists frank but subtle ability to direct the attention to our private struggles. At the point where spiritual and material reality intersect; when we are on the borderland of darkness and light, we are met by joy and sorrow.
Korkeilas art is increasingly affective on a private level. Feelings ranging from humor to disgust, despair to hope, are allowed. Albeit its private aspect a strong tension between general opinion, individual expectations and illusions is ever-present in Korkeilas production. To the viewer, the insight that the experiences evoked by Korkeilas work cannot be normatively explained, is left predominant.
- Pilvi Kalhama
Jukka Korkeila (b.1968) lives and works in Helsinki and Berlin. He studied architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology 1988-90 and interior and furniture design at Taik 1990-92. He then studied at the Finnish Academy of Fine Art 1992-1997 after which he also studied at the Berlin art school 1997-98. Korkeila is one of our most respected contemporary artists who yearly takes part in several exhibitions abroad. His works are represented in central Nordic contemporary art collections. In the year 1999 Korkeila was selected Young Artist of the Year and he took part in the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2004.
