carlier | gebauer

Kirsi Mikkola

Finnish artist Kirsi Mikkola gained recognition in the 1990s for colorful, cartoonish plaster sculptures. Recent years have shown a radical shift in her artistic practice, which has been devoted to developing a highly distinct approach to abstraction that merges the formal language of painting and collage, referred to by Mikkola as “constructions”. She builds these complex and delicate structures by weaving and layering a myriad of brightly colored paper strips, varying in length and thickness. Mikkola describes this process as an act of concentrated eruption and, indeed, the forces at work in these energetic, dissonant compositions draw upon abstract notions like gravity, suspension, weight, and movement.

Kirsi Mikkola (b.1959, Helsinki) lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as CentrePasquArt, Biel; Konstmuseet, Malmö; Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz;  Salon Dahlmann, Berlin; n.b.k., Berlin; White Columns, New York; The Finnish National Museum, Helsinki; and Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.