Teemu Mäenpää’s expressive paintings brim with raw energy, vibrant colour, and playful openness. His art grows from the very gesture of painting itself: fluttering palm fronds and elongated petals emerge from the natural arc of his hand. 

He combines media intuitively – from oils to spray paints – creating works that pulse with immediacy. Mäenpää’s boldly physical, uninhibited approach to painting is rooted in his background in street art, and his practice embodies an attitude that defies the gravitas of high art.

Paradise Lost unveils Mäenpää’s latest works – paintings that dance between abstraction and representation, alive with a rich vocabulary of metaphorical plants and animals. 

The exhibition’s title evokes a longing for nature and a yearning for a lost Eden. Yet in Mäenpää’s art, plants primarily serve as mirrors of human nature, metaphors for care, connection, society, life, and growth. Each painting, in its own way, is also a vicarious self-portrait.

Teemu Mäenpää (b. 1977) is a Tampere-based artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2008. He has exhibited widely in Finland and abroad. Mäenpää has also completed several public commissions.

Paradise Lost marks his second solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary.

Helsinki Contemporary

31.10.-23.11.2025

Wed-Fri 12.00_18.00

Sat-Sun 12.00-16.00

Free entry