Ecstatic Nausea
by Jukka Siikala
Ecstatic Nausea is the first monograph to feature the work of the Finnish cult artist Jukka Siikala. Mostly known for his highly accomplished and erotically charged oil paintings. Siikala is also a conceptual artist, filmmaker and photographer.
While his early work primarily attempted to replicate anxiety-driven pornographic images, mostly obtained from the internet, with a photo-realistic accuracy, his later efforts invite the viewer into uncanny, never-seen-before, surreally charged territories.
Siikala has described his work as pornography sprung from the mind of a child who never matured correctly, an obsession which exists within the parameters of a world which holds neither morals nor empathy, where the female is a fetishised platform and the male is almost non-existent. Within this private and deeply eroticised vision, the sexual elements and subjects seem to mutate constantly in compulsive attempts to reach a state of sensation which the artist refers to as ‘Ecstatic Nausea’.
A broad retrospective of Siikala’s work will be published for the first time by Infinity Land Press in autumn 2019. This monograph will comprise of beautifully reproduced paintings, photographs and digital collages as well as an in-depth interview with the artist.
With a foreword by Mikko Aspa and an interview conducted by Martin Bladh
Available now
2019
Softbound, 204 pages, 210 x 280mm,
ISBN 978-1-9160091-2-7
run of 150 copies
Collector's edition
All Collector's Edition sets - paintings, polaroids & flat prints come with the book.
SIGNED PRINTS
Sausage Mission - 200 x 280mm // £65
Fading With Delay, B/W set- Five prints 200 x 280mm // £65
Fading With Delay, Moaning Doors set - Five prints 200 x 280mm // £85
Moriah, B/W - Three prints 200 x 280mm // £65
SIGNED POLAROIDS
PAINTINGS
*The canvases can be professionally stretched or bespoke-framed at your request.
Please email us for more details.
Spread I - Oil on canvas 210 x 280 mm // £175 - SOLD
Spread III - Oil on canvas 210 x 280 mm // £175 - SOLD
Spread II - Oil on canvas 210 x 280 mm // £175 - SOLD
Sideview - Oil on canvas 210 x 280 mm // £175 - SOLD
Female Arrangements With Skates - Five prints 200 x 280mm // £85
Fading With Delay, Inside Parasitic Reality - Three prints 200 x 280mm // £65
New Kingdom (semen on mushrooms) - Six prints 200 x 280mm // £95
Experimental Voyeur- Seven prints 200 x 280mm // £105
About the author
Finnish artist Jukka Siikala has displayed his work in various countries including the United States, Japan, Russia, Belgium and the United Kingdom. His published works to date include the visual pieces Oksu and Human Porridge, as well as the acclaimed art and photo books Anti-social Realism (w/ Mikko Aspa & Pasi Markkula), Roman Shower, and Rubber & Blood (Bizarre Uproar), documenting a prurient interest in pornography, noise-culture and trashy live performance.
Siikala began his career in the early ‘90s, producing a series of zines filled with an aggressive mix of chaotic collages and drawings, before becoming involved in the second wave of black metal designing album artwork and participating in increasingly depraved shows, leading to his creation of the performance piece My Body Is A Slimy Drug. By the early 2000s, and having relocated for a time to Latvia, he had conceived his first porn-related paintings, a burgeoning relationship with X-rated internet imagery which flourished in the pixelated madness of Human Porridge. Since 2015, Siikala has also worked on video art, photography, and the Narrative Closure project with Grunt. At present, he’s busy making a dreamy fetishistic film, continues to paint, practices and teaches goyu-ruy karate, and runs an exclusive exploitation/horror movie club in Helsinki, where he is currently based.