Kustaa Saksi (b. 1975, Kouvola, Finland) builds worlds of playful, paradoxical and troubling yet inviting shapes and environments pulled out of the ordinary. Combining organic qualities with uniquely detailed textures with rich colour palettes and experimental material use, Saksi is creating contemporary spaces, objects and atmospheres. His abstracted Hypnopompic tapestry series sits somewhere between the states of dreaming and awakening – surrealist and sensational. First Symptoms collection draws its inspiration and texture from the scientific examination and personal experience of migraine.

His work is often surreal and out of place. Saksi is fascinated by illusory states and visual delusions – usually pattern-based, kaleidoscopic, identical structures sometimes flickering, forming and reforming all over the visual field – common in migraine auras for most sufferers. Often geometric structures cover the whole visual field: checkerboards, transparent oriental rugs, tribal patterns, ornamental spherical objets d’art like radiolaria or bacteria, repeating wallpaper designs, spiderweb-like figures or concentric circles and squares, architectural forms or decorative paper-cut snowflakes, mosaics, spirals and swirls.

Saksi combines natural fibres such as mohair, alpaca, cotton and wool with rubber, metal, acrylic and phosphorescent yarns to create complex digital to analog textures. The jacquard weaving technique is named after the French inventor, Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752–1834), who designed the jacquard loom. With Jacquard’s automatic loom, it was possible to weave complex mechanically patterned silk fabrics. The technology was revolutionary in the textile manufacturing industry around the world.

Saksi’s works have been exhibited at Victoria & Albert MuseumCooper Hewitt MuseumSan Jose Museum of ArtTextielMuseumDesign Museum HelsinkiMuseo Poldi PezzoliKunsthall Stavanger and Helsinki Kunsthall

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