MARKKU LAAKSOWanderer im Wunderland 1.3.2025 – 23.3.2025

Wanderer im Wunderland is an exhibition inspired by encounters with art. In my life, I have visited many art museums, often deliberately seeking out certain works, and chancing upon many others. The starting point for my work has long been the effect of chance on life. When I paint my works, I have not planned a body of work, but have always let the previous painting lead to the next, and associations influence the final outcome.

The works in the Wanderer im Wunderland series of paintings references both a painting by Caspar David Friedrich and the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The combination of these worlds provides a framework for observation, line of vision and various parallels. I first saw Friedrich's painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1819) at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in the 1990s. Even back then, the work was particularly memorable when, on the same trip, a local artist I knew put on a green jacket at a flea market and we noticed that he bore a striking resemblance to the figure in the painting. A few years ago, when our family was in Hamburg, our six-year-old at the time was most impressed by the Miniature Wunderland museum, and we adults by the exhibitions in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. It was then that Wanderer met Wonderland.

Thanks to my child, I also decided to incorporate the works of Vincent van Gogh as subjects for my paintings. The Starry Night (1889), which we saw at the MOMA in New York, got our five-year-old to become fascinated by Vincent, and at the latest was completely taken by the Nopola’s children's book Ricky Rapper and the Wrong Vincent. Within a couple of years, our child has repeated the theme in their paintings dozens of times. My own sketchbook of Vincent's Irises had already been drawn before I had a physical encounter with the work, but it was in front of that work that I realised how I wanted to interpret it.

Over the years, I have encountered van Gogh's works occasionally, and they have always left a lasting impression on my subconscious. While touring museums with my wife in London in 2014, at the National Gallery, we were ushered without warning into a dimly lit room where only a few people at a time were allowed in. For the first time in 65 years, two identical interpretations of Van Gogh's Sunflowers (1887) were displayed side by side. The sight was confusing and sacred, I was not prepared for it, the encounter was unforeseen. The works were something different from what I had always imagined; they had restrained hues, sensitivity and precision in their figurativeness.

The second subject of the paintings in my exhibition, Caravaggio’s canvas, had been simmering in my sketchbook for years, until the coronavirus years, when it finally materialised into paintings. When the roads to art were closed due to coronavirus restrictions, my visual idea of bringing out the background canvases of Renaissance paintings to partially cover the painting took on a new meaning. In some paintings, I have added a canvas not to cover, but rather to highlight the subject.

For me, art is becoming more and more real alongside all the so-called reality. In the current desolate state of the world, I found comfort in painting these works. As the author Hannu Mäkelä once said in a talk; "children and love are the meaning of life". I wholeheartedly agree.

Markku Laakso

Markku Laakso (b. 1970) is a Sámi visual artist from Enontekio. He works both as a solo painter and as a partner with his wife Annika Dahlsten, making photographic, video and animation works. Laakso has held several solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in Finland, the Nordic countries, Spain, Italy, Japan, France, Germany and the USA. Laakso's works are in the collections of HAM Helsinki Art Museum, the Finnish National Gallery, the City of Gothenburg and the Riddo Duottar Museum of Sámi Art, among others.