Mexas
Esko Männikkö
Self Published
Supported by The Hasselblad Centre
English
Essays by Maaretta Jaukkuri and Gary Michael Dault
Hardcover
81 pages
290 x 240 mm
1999
ISBN 952910703X
From the essay by Maaretta Jaukkuri: “Texas offered Männnikkö visual plenitude and colourful mixtures of cultural traditions, as well as an encounter with the survival strategies that the Mexican population have created around themselves. In San Antonio and its surroundings, he met with a multitude of practices aimed at overcoming the tensions and boredom of daily toil and routine, with ingenious ways of creating possibilities for escaping into other worlds where things would look brighter, more colourful and more joyful. The private universes that we all in different ways create around us are a source of endless wonder and admiration in Männikkö’s art. The energy used to create these private ‘paradises’ seems to be inexhaustible, while also telling us that the search for beauty, harmony and inspiration are an integral part of the human condition…The unblinking clarity of Esko Männikkö’s images perforates complex social, cultural and individual life situations. Irrespective of geography and social systems, a kind of pattern of imbalance seems to emerge and repeat itself on the surface of these images. These imbalances seem to exist both in the scenes depicted and in the ways these scenes are looked at in other contexts. They are present both within the world of the images and in the worlds surrounding them when they are seen a artworks. Seen from a little bit closer, the very same imbalances seem to become a source of creativity and of new ways of looking about us.
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About the Artist
Esko Männikkö was born in 1959 in Pudasjärvi in the northern part of Finland. He lives and works in Oulu. In 2008 he was awarded the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. The same year he presented Cocktails 1990-2007 at Millesgården in Stockholm, Kulturens Hus in Luleå and Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall in Arendal. Other solo exhibitions include presentations at Göteborgs Konstmuseum (2016), the Finsk-Norsk Kulturinstitutt, Oslo (2004), the Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg (1999), the Malmö Konsthall (1997), as well as Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, De Pont, Tilburg and Lenbachhaus, München, all in 1996. He has taken part in numerous international exhibitions, including the travelling exhibition Investigations of a dog, organised by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (2009-2010), as well as the Venice Biennial (2005), SEEhistory. Der private Blick, Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2005), Liverpool Biennal (2004), Beyond Paradise, Shanghai Art Museum (2003), Contemporary Photography II: Anti-Memory, Yokohama Museum of Art (2000), São Paulo Biennial (1998), and Johannesburg Biennial (1997). Männikkö has had numerous solo exhibitions at Galerie Nordenhake in Stockholm and Berlin.
nordenhake.com
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About the Supporting Organisation
The Hasselblad Foundation is a unique platform for photography in the Nordic region. The photographic research and exhibitions complement each other and are closely tied through publications as well as frequent symposiums. Three major exhibitions a year are presented at the Hasselblad Center, of which one is the annual Hasselblad Award Winner exhibition. The exhibition program consists of established as well as younger Swedish and international photographers. The Hasselblad Center is located in the Gothenburg Museum of Art. They supported Männikkö’s publication of this book.
hasselbladfoundation.org
