Marika Mäkelä @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Light of the Sand" Exhibition

Marika Mäkelä: Light of the Sand

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

September 26 – October 26, 2025

Marika Mäkelä’s new paintings take us on a journey to places both familiar and unknown. Often, it is precisely the unknown that reveals the familiar in a new light. This exhibition is a synthesis of her experiences: influences gathered from many places merge into worlds of their own. Disparate realities intersect in her work – her paintings are like cultural melting pots, where movement and insight are distilled as images.

Marika Mäkelä has spent long periods in Spain and Morocco, and the influence of these cultures is deeply embedded in her art. Her travels have left visible traces: certain shapes, colors, and qualities of light have remained with her. Spain, for instance, has inspired her interest in angular forms, in the way shapes extend beyond the canvas, and in the contrasts and encounters between materials.

Yet two elements always lie at the heart of her paintings: light and form – their observation and dissection. Her new works reveal a recent fascination with the play of light on sand. They reflect the mutable nature of sand in shifting contexts, from desert expanses to swirling storms. Sand-inspired clusters of form and thought have also found their way into her compositions. A figurative element emerges too, articulating rhythm and carrying the narrative forward. This narrativity grows out of experiences that entwine thoughts, landscapes, places, and journeys – finally crystallizing in Mäkelä’s mind in the form of a painting.

Marika Mäkelä (b. 1947) is one of Finland’s most eminent painters. In a career spanning six decades, she has received many of the nation’s highest artistic honors, including the State Prize, the Pro Finlandia Medal, and the title of Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland. In 2024, the President of the Republic of Finland awarded her the honorary title of professor. Marika Mäkelä’s works are represented in major international museums, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, and Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Marika Mäkelä @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - Secret Plant and Other Motifs

Marika Mäkelä: Secret Plant and Other Motifs 
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 
June 7 – August 18, 2019

In a career now spanning five decades, Marika Mäkelä (b.1947) has made her mark as an unflinchingly bold and ever-surprising painter. Her radically evolving technique bears witness to her daring spirit of creative renewal – recently, she has taken up woodworking tools alongside her paintbrush, and she has exchanged the canvas for heavy wooden panels. Her thickly daubed layers of paint have an ornamental three-dimensionality that verges upon sculpture. Her works push boundaries, compelling us to reflect on the boundary between painting and sculpture. Typically for Marika Mäkelä, her brushwork is imbued with intensity, deriving its vitality from the synergy ignited between the buoyant visual vocabulary and the heaviness of the wood.

Nature is the common source of inspiration for the colors, forms, and materials of her recent works. The paintings featured in the exhibition celebrate the richness of nature, the joy of growth, and the timeless cyclicity of the organic world, while also delivering a critical commentary on biodiversity loss and the urgent need to protect the natural world. Marika Mäkelä asks: what can we humans do for the good of the planet? Her soft, abstract idiom draws inspiration from the world of plants. It reminds us that all life begins with a tiny seed and, if given a chance, that tiny seed will grow and thrive with fierce, unstoppable vigor.

The sculptures, made in co-operation with sculptor Tapani Kokko (b.1969), pick up on the same themes and rhythms as the paintings. The ornamental wooden boxes represent seed pods. These visually striking pieces are a celebration of growth and vitality.

Marika Mäkelä made her artistic breakthrough during the neo-expressionistic wave in the 1980s. She is known for her lively, profound use of color and her thick, multi-layered, almost three-dimensional brushstrokes. Marika Mäkelä received the State Art Committee State Prize in 1974 and 1984, the Finnish Cultural Fund’s Prize in 1994, and the Pro Finlandia medal in 2006. In 2017 she received the Order of the Lion of Finland. Her works have been on display in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad.

GALERIE FORSBLOM
Lönnrotinkatu 5 / Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki
www.galerieforsblom.com

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