Korkiakoski, Sami

Merging rich calligraphic and expressionist traditions, Korkiakoski creates feverish paintings using silicone, oil, and spray paint on raw canvas – often working directly from the tube or silicone gun. With this fast gesture, dense layering, and texturally varied material, each work seems both forming and decaying, brand new and prehistoric, agonizing and cathartic. In them, we find raw emotion made palpable; a primal yawp put down in form and color. Line and language are treated not just as visual and semantic, but also acoustic forms. Their energy is not contained on the wall—rather it radiates out to fill the spaces they inhabit. In this way, as angst-ridden and even violent as each work can seem, they create a kind of spiritual realm, a slight departure from our mental and emotional everyday; an opportunity for release.

Mike Weiss, Lowell Ryan Projects, LA