14.3. — 6.4.2025

The exhibition series titled Decoration is a multifaceted concept that branches out in different directions, combining not only visual art but also influences from fields such as interior design and set design.

Through my works, I explore the blurred boundary between the traditional divisions of “decoration” and “art,” and how an image is interpreted in different ways depending on its purpose, materiality, and presentation. What happens when an image is printed on a lightbox or hung from the ceiling like a set piece? Does the image distance itself from the viewer when presented digitally printed on a lightbox, or does it come closer to the viewer, acting as an easily approachable and active piece in relation to the exhibition space? Large works, which follow the dimensions of the exhibition space, partly communicate with the architecture of the space itself.

The themes of ornament and decoration serve as the central structure of the works. The pieces are a kind of hybrid, where visual influences from popular culture and other non-Western cultures mix and parallel each other, making aesthetics and decoration the very subject of the images. Various working methods interact with each other, so that image themes continue from one technique and material to another.

Originally based on paintings, the works were collaged digitally and printed, moving from painting into a world that resembles mass production and artificiality. In the exhibition space, the lightbox works can be associated with design products created in the art culture. In terms of materials, the lightboxes reference the familiar street scene billboard advertisements. Visually, they may also remind one of old, retro-style arcade machines. The light emanating from within the lightboxes mimics the screen of a computer or phone, the devices from which we are used to viewing digital images.

The kitschy aesthetic of the vibrant visual worlds emphasizes the “superficial” nature of decoration. In my works, however, decorative elements are taken to a level where the visual essence of the image justifies itself, turning the “tasteless” into the “tasteful”

In the exhibition space, broader thematic concepts of ornament and decoration link freely developed individual works to form one larger whole.

The exhibition has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Mikko Luostarinen (b. 1993) has a Master of Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts. He has had solo exhibitions, for example, at Project Room in Helsinki, Galleria Uusikuva in Kotka and Galleria Ars Libera in Kuopio. He has also taken part in several group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. From 2016 to 2017, Luostarinen spent a year in Japan as an exchange student at the University of Tsukuba.