Born 1976 I Lives and works in Helsinki
Sami Lukkarinen’s art is based on pictures he finds from the internet, pixelates and then paints
with oil colours. The exceptional and detailed surface texture, particular understanding of colours and an organized composition give a baseline to these contemporary works bordering on impressionism.
Lukkarinen edits the initial pictures, bringing forward the colours. The motifs are mainly persons;
either portraits of notable people or selfie pictures with forthcoming gestures and expressions.
The works are painted with thick layers of colours, carefully applied with palette knives.
Lukkarinen’s hues are built gradually, replicating each colour tone and the enlarged pixel of the
original picture.
Today’s visual culture, which exposes us all to an abundance of imagery and reshapes the
traditional understanding of portraiture through the oversupply characteristic of the selfie era,
serves as the ideological foundation of Lukkarinen’s works. At the same time, the pictorial
landscape is soft, almost tangibly creamy. Through the thick layer of paint, Lukkarinen transforms a randomly selected image of a pose into a blurred portrait in which one can also sense the chiaroscuro of the Renaissance, a play of light and shadow, and a quiet sense of intimacy. The surface structure, precise understanding of colour and sense of rhythm create a cohesive whole that balances materiality and image, merging painterly tactility with the aesthetics of the digital source image.
Lukkarinen has graduated from the Department of Media Arts, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.
He has exhibited at e.g. Instituto Iberoamericano de Finlandia, Madrid, Spain, Kunsthalle in Turku,
Finland, and Finlandsinstitutets galleri in Stockholm, Sweden. His works are in the Microsoft Art
Collection, Absolut Art Collection, Finnish State Art Collection, Wäinö Aaltonen Art Museum,
Saastamoinen Foundation and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.