Melina Paakkonen paints, creates collages and combines these two techniques. Her paintings are abundantly layered, with decoration and expression coming together in a sensuous manner. In her collages, the rugged material aesthetic and the line smoothly drawn from it build a world of surrealists. The artworks have concealed humour. It may not be immediately apparent, but is rather a web woven from tiny details that brings the artworks to life.
Paakkonen draws from art history, particularly from eras before modernism. She plays with human-animal relations, scampering in the bottomless treasure trove of cultural history’s various notions of animals.