Red traces Mikko Paakkola’s streamlined production, which has always had a blazing red core. The key elements of his paintings, the rich pigments and a horizon line, have carried his work through forty years, ever since his early days as a burgeoning artist. The exhibition testifies the artist’s commitment to his subject matter, which holds in its intensive grip. Paakkola’s paintings encourage the viewer to think: Whatever you desire, want it so that you wish for its eternal return.

Everyone leaves their trace in the world. Paakkola’s trace is his painting: colours and a line that creates the horizon. The horizon establishes a border and infinity at the same time. It has very little to do with the landscape. Rather, the horizon is a border between the senses and ideas, a motif that connects the earth and air.

“A painting halts the passage of time. An endless presence. A painting takes time to emerge and seeks eternal existence. The duration of time is present in it. A painting cannot depict a specific moment”. Mikko Paakkola

The paintings’ intense colours make the artworks glow from within. When looking at a painting, we know that it has been made, it is a trace from the act of painting. At the same time, it appears to us as an event: the colour glows in front of our eyes, and we immerse ourselves in the painting. The scene that unfolds is an intense sunset or sunrise, an apocalypse or a new beginning. Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) writes: “We are on the edge of disaster without being able to situate it in the future: it is rather always already past, and yet we are on the edge or under its threat”.

Paakkola’s dedication to colour and his unwavering understanding of art are closely related to abstract art in the USA during the 1940s. Encountering paintings by Mark Rothko (1903–1970) left a lasting impression on his path as an artist. Playwright John Logan’s line in Red (2009), a play about Rothko, captures the same tension that exists in Paakkola’s paintings: “There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend… One day the black will swallow the red”.

On the other hand, artist and art theoretician Ad Reinhardt’s (1913–1967) quest for artistic freedom is evident in the paintings’ presence and intrinsic value; in their integrity, concretism, anonymity, sincerity, certainty and reality. Reinhardt’s paintings asked: who is afraid of red, yellow and blue? We encounter ourselves in the world of colours.

Mikko Paakkola is a painter. He says: “Painting is an attempt to reach perfection, which is approached through repetition and difference. This goal keeps the painting ongoing – it is a stuggle for existence”. The daily practice of painting tells what is essential. Art is redeemed through the act of painting.

According to Reinhardt: “Intensity, consciousness, perfection in art come only after long routine, preparation and attention. — The one work for a fine artist, the one painting, is the painting of the one-size canvas—the single scheme, one formal device, one colour-monochrome, one linear division in each direction, one symmetry, one texture, one free-hand-brushing, one rhythm, one working everything into one dissolution and one indivisibility, each painting into one overall uniformity and non-irregularity”.

Art takes a stand on the concept of an individual’s free will, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Artists are assumed to be authentic, which is understood as an consistent inevitability between the artist’s character and the artwork. Paakkola has been working on one and the same painting for almost forty years. He has focused on being as an act. He proposes: “Those of us who thrive on colour and exist for colour do that in our own manner. Kindly allow us to do so, as a mere sign of our eccentricity and natural peculiarity”. If there is something we can learn from artists, it has to do with their integrity and ability to make use of their freedom.

Most works in the exhibition have been painted in last decade, as this is not a time for a retrospective. The exhibited works are from the artist’s own collection as well as the collections of private individuals and the National Gallery.

The exhibition features large individual paintings and series of smaller works. Paakkola typically paints in oils and acrylics and uses dry pigment on gessoed hardboard. Other material experiments are included as well. The works are untitled, identifiable by their height and width. The most distinctive feature of the exhibition is the abundant red colour that glows through the exhibition space. Paakkola uses a full palette of colours, but the intensity of his primary colours (red, blue and yellow) is unmatched.

Mikko Paakkola (b. Lappi, Rauma) is a Turku-based artist, curator and key player in the field of art. He has been writing articles for the Taide journal since 2018. Paakkola’s first solo exhibition took place at Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, Turku, in 1984. He has held dozens of solo exhibitions and taken part in over a hundred group exhibitions, with half of them taking place in different parts of Europe.

His streamlined artistic process is underpinned by his strong art historical and art theoretical perception of painting. Even before embarking on his art education, Paakkola studied philosophy and comparative literature. He studied at Turun piirustuskoulu [Turku School of Fine Arts] and completed his postgraduate studies at the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Currently living and working in Turku, Paakkola’s artistic identity is central European. At the turn of the millennium, he spent 10 years in Brussels and found his home there, beneath a uniformly grey sky, which holds within it all the colours of the world.

The exhibition has received funding from the Finnish Heritage Agency.