CANDIDATE 2001

Jukka Korkeila

Painter Jukka Korkeila combines two basic painterly elements: figurative images and an abstract colourful picture plane - a marriage of the representational and the non-representational. Korkeila shatters the picture plane into a thousand fragments and details, crowding the canvas with a highly disparate set of visual stimuli and allusions. Out of this diverse assortment of signs he meticulously builds a whole, defamiliarising the content. Korkeila boldly alludes to images borrowed from film, TV and comic strips, self-reflexively exploring the painting process as one of the themes of his art. To him, stylization is a strategy by which to 'divide and rule'. Korkeila attended the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and spent a year studying at the Berlin Art Academy. In 1999 he shared the 'Young Artist of the Year' title with Janne Kaitala and Janne Räisänen.