Mikko Haiko
The Meadow
13.9. – 6.10.2019
“What fascinates me about art is how the daily life in front of my eyes can begin to seem somehow absurd, almost like a revelation. My camera highlights reality. I press the record button and symbols appear. An excavator that has sunk in a bog is a pretty damn strong symbol. At least it’s a heavy symbol. And it did not budge. For some time.”
Valmet. The Manual of Hope and Despair (2018) is a video of an attempt or rather attempts to lift an excavator from a bog. The old Valmet excavator was used for digging ditches and the aim was to get it started and back to dry land. Recorded at different times of the year, the video can be seen as a reference to the myth of Sisyphus who deceived the gods and, as a punishment, had to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity.
The Meadow (2017) is a video installation in which a man plays the accordion to grazing cows. The herd is annoyed by the music and they run away.
The works in the exhibition were filmed over a period of one year in the same area, in a field of a few hectares in South Karelia. The field is the common denominator of the works and, in a way, it serves as a surrealistic stage. The field is rebuilt in the exhibition space as a psychological landscape.
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Mikko Haiko (b. 1984) is a visual artist from Lemi, Finland. He works with photography and moving images. He often finds his themes from rural areas. Haiko earned his Master of Arts degree in 2018 from the department of photography at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Haiko has had several solo exhibitions and has also taken part in many group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. His works have been on display, for example, at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Riihimäki Art Museum, the State Russian Museum and Exhibition Centre Rosphoto, the Boutographies photography festival in Montpellier, France, and a photography festival in Moravská Třebová, Czech Republic.
Haiko won the Artproof Grant Finland competition in 2017 and was a Fotofinlandia finalist in 2014. The artist’s works are included in the Finnish state art collection, the Lappeenranta Art Museum’s collection as well as in private collections in Finland and abroad.
Arts Promotion Centre Finland and KKES have supported the exhibition.
Mikko Haiko
+358 50 365 1290
mikko.haiko(at)gmail.com
