Artist: Kirsi Mikkola

While painting, Kirsi Mikkola strives to enter a completely intuitive state, transcending conscious thought and allowing the brush to become her musical instrument. By surrendering entirely to the process, she seeks a connection with an invisible, multi-layered plane of reality. Each painting is an explorative journey, weaving together form, color, composition, and rhythm. Contrary elements often collide: dizzying energy and tumultuous anarchy coexist with hushed sensitivity. Her art conveys both uncompromising expressive vigor and profound vulnerability. She has no interest in creating easily digestible or “well-behaved” paintings, instead embracing a deliberate tension that can be as unsettling as it is captivating, hypnotic as well as challenging.

Mikkola rose to prominence in the 1990s with comic strip-like, politically incisive sculptures, later turning to abstract painting. In recent years, figurative elements have begun to appear in her work. She consistently challenges the dogmas of art history, yet beneath this questioning lies a deep and enduring passion for painting. At the same time, she seeks to break free from the constraints of reason, allowing her compositions to unfold without predetermined narratives. Central to her practice is the breathing surface of the image – an immersive space into which the viewer is invited to enter.

Kirsi Mikkola (b. 1959) studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts. During her extensive international career, she has exhibited at venues including CentrePasquArt in Biel, the Malmö Art Museum, Bregenzer Kunstverein, White Columns in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki. She has also held a professorship in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Mikkola lives and works in Berlin.