05 Dec 2025 - 22 Jan 2026

In his recent paintings for Barvinskyi Gallery, Kylätasku turns to the enduring motif of paradise, a theme that has shaped artistic imagination for centuries. Early Christian art envisioned paradise as a celestial reward, rendered through gardens of abundance and radiant, otherworldly light. In the Hellenic world, the summit of Mount Olympus stood as an emblem of divine perfection, while Persian miniature painting expanded the idea into intricate, jewel-like depictions of poetic and spiritual realms. Across cultures and epochs, paradise has operated as both a promise and a projection—an idyllic, spiritual, or utopian landscape that mirrors humanity’s religious, mythological, and philosophical longings.

For Kylätasku, however, paradise is not a geographical site but a psychological and existential condition. It is a state of being reached through an understanding of one’s own place in the world. His work enters into conversation with art-historical precedents—from the fantastical, multi-layered cosmologies of Hieronymus Bosch’s *Garden of Earthly Delights* to the monumental celestial vision of Tintoretto’s *Il Paradiso* in the Doge’s Palace—yet ultimately seeks to articulate a paradise that is internal, mutable, and contingent.

Rooted firmly in the European visual tradition, Kylätasku’s paintings probe themes of transience, belonging, and the poetics of space. Beginning with digital collages sourced from classical painting, contemporary fashion, and architectural imagery, he constructs and deconstructs his compositions through layering, erasure, and recomposition. The resulting works resist immediate interpretation; instead, they invite slow looking and sustained contemplation, offering a shifting terrain where personal mythology and collective memory intertwine.

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