Markku Keränen: An Everlasting Spring of Colour

3.3. - 8.4.2018

The human-centric world of Markku Keränen’s paintings radiates with the joy of colours. The retrospective exhibition portrays the expert touch of Keränen’s tempera paintings from the 1970s until present day.

Keränen’s paintings portray encounters and collisions that evoke a vivid sense of movement and dynamic tension. His style of expression has evolved constantly, growing progressively denser as his early human figures have slowly dissolved into the fabric of his abstract tapestries. Figures locked in nuanced embraces have gradually metamorphosed into chain-like patterns, eventually being stripped down to the most basic of shapes: pure coloured dots.

Working serially, Keränen engages in a leisurely back-and-forth between systematic order and unruly playfulness from one painting to the next. In his most recent works, Keränen conjures a vivid sense of movement by magically manipulating tonal contrasts and compositional elements.

Markku Keränen, Unen vahti, 1978. Kuva: Rauno Träskelin

Markku Keränen, Hyllytyttö, 1994. Kuva: Rauno Träskelin