november 25, 2015 - Kiasma

Markus Heikkerö. Love and death, pleasure and the cycles of life

Life's a Bitch, Baby... showcases the work of Markus Heikkerö from the beginning of his career to recent years. The exhibition is based on a large donation made by the artist in 2013, when more than a hundred works by Heikkerö were added to Kiasma Collections. Additionally, the Finnish National Gallery received a large volume of archive material that sheds light on Heikkerö's practice and the reception of his work.

Art history and pop culture are constant presences in Markus Heikkerö's art. When Heikkerö began his artistic career in the 1960s in the underground movement, he bewildered audiences with his openly sexual, surrealist works. In his later paintings the focus has shifted to light and colour and broad, visionary worlds.

Different decades can be clearly distinguished in Heikkerö's oeuvre. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, his style betrays an interest in surrealism, sci-fi films and the redefinition of inner and outer reality. Vibrant and colourful fantasies inspired by popular culture now appear for the first time in his work. Heikkerö's spray paintings from the 1980s feature such figures as Socrates wearing shades and postmodern portraits of Finnish pop culture celebrities. Heikkerö's stay in the United States is reflected in his work from the 1980s as a shift in the use of light and his palette. In the new paintings, micro- and macrocosmic motifs intertwine in spiralling patterns.

The size of Heikkerö's paintings begins to grow from the early 2000s. Youthful psychedelics are replaced by the full-blooded artist's baroque extravaganzas of spatial illusion and sophisticated tonalities. The paintings contain numerous references to the history of painting and to Heikkerö's sketches of cathedrals and urban architecture in Central and South Europe.

Markus Heikkerö (b. 1952, Helsinki) is a Helsinki-based visual artist and musician (in such bands as Sperm and Sleepy Sleepers). He has worked as a teacher e.g. in the Lahti University of Applied Sciences, as examiner of doctoral theses in the University of Art and Design Helsinki, and as visiting professor in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Heikkerö had a solo exhibition at Studio K in Kiasma in 1999, and he has also exhibited his work in several collection exhibitions in Kiasma.

This exhibition is curated by Saara Hacklin from Kiasma. She has also edited the exhibition catalogue, which apart from extensive illustrations also includes an interview with the artist and two essays on Heikkerö's work, one by Leevi Haapala, the director of Kiasma, the other by Maritta Mellais from the Archive Collections at Finnish National Gallery.

Heikkerö Leinonen Talk Show on 24 October at 6 pm features the two artists as well as fellow artists they have invited as guests, among them Pepe Willberg, Pedro Hietanen, Dave Lindholm and Paleface (tickets €15/10).

The title of the show, Life's a Bitch, Baby... is from an early print by Heikkerö. It reflects the enduring themes in Heikkerö's art: love and death, pleasure and the cycles of life.

Markus Heikkerö
Life's a Bitch, Baby...
9 Oct 2015 – 10 Jan 2016

More info for the media
Saara Hacklin, +358 (0)294 500 538, saara.hacklin@kiasma.fi
Kiasma Communications
Piia Laita, +358 (0)40 590 8805, piia.laita@kiasma.fi
Päivi Oja, +358 (0) 40 575 1486, paivi.oja@kiasma.fi

Markus Heikkerö on the Lähteillä website that presents selected materials and their background information from the Archive Collection and the Library of the Finnish National Gallery http://www.lahteilla.fi/fi/publication/markus-heikkero

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma is part of the Finnish National Gallery along with the Ateneum Art Museum and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum.
www.kansallisgalleria.fi