Teemu Saukkonen

Teemu Saukkonen made his breakthrough as a visual artist in the early 1980s when studying man and powerful expressive painting as a means of communication. While the models were originally acquaintances and the artist in person, the figure of man subsequently evolved to be nameless,

ageless and devoid of gender, as man became a means for Saukkonen to depict the entire human condition. This placed life before art, leaving the artist and his images to serve as the humble servants of life itself.

While retaining a powerful materiality and physicality, his paintings in the 1990s followed general artistic trends, with an increase in conceptual elements as a living surface texture and rich patterning became key means of expression. Words appeared among the visual elements of images, with chromaticity expanding beyond the broken tones of the artist’s early career towards cleaner and brighter shades.

Physicality is a continual theme of Saukkonen’s art, expressed through various collage approaches, colour surfaces of varying thickness and the large size of his works. He paints directly onto a canvas spread on the floor, allowing the colour to pour and spatter so that the variety of thick and thin, shiny and translucent paint surfaces create tensions in his works.

When Teemu Saukkonen presented his new paintings at Forum Box in December 2005 the largest works covered the highest walls of the exhibition space almost from floor to ceiling. The scale of expression ranged from needlepoint as part of small paintings to paint surfaces spread with a roller over the largest works.

Lot is sold in collaboration with Forum Box.