Bio
Markus Jäntti is a Finnish-born visual artist, living and working between Berlin and Finland. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Berlin University of the Arts under Professor Robert Lucander and participated in the Hunter College “Studio Art” Master Program in New York. He has been awarded, among others, the Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium des Landes Berlin and the Finnish Art Society’s young artist grant.
Jäntti’s work spans painting, print, and glass sculpture to examine outsiderness, visual excess, and the intersections of high and popular culture through motifs of luxury and equestrianism. His first solo exhibition with Gallery Halmetoja in Helsinki will take place in August 2026, preceded by a two-part solo exhibition at Finlandsinstitutet and Grafiska Sällskapet in Stockholm in April 2026, alongside a three-year residency stipend at the Pro Artibus Foundation in Finland beginning in August 2026.
MARKUS JÄNTTI
Once upon a time
Miettinen Collection Berlin, 2026
The nature of time, of completion, and of commodification – which seeks to reduce the former, and strives towards the latter in order to more expeditiously arrive at one’s payday – are concerns common to both artistic production, and the horsey society depicted in Markus Jäntti’s works.
Engaging with the visual lexicon of luxury brands, Jäntti considers their temporal dimensions by drawing on John Berger’s observation that advertising never speaks to the here and now. The artist’s appropriation of luxury labels’ visual codes and commercial idioms engages precisely this temporal slippage. Companies from car to clothing capitalise, via their communications, on the nostalgic yearning for a bygone belle epoque which perhaps only ever existed in these behemoth brands’ endemic visual presentations.
This Bergerian “non-present” is a bucolic and beautiful realm, realised by Jäntti in oil, watercolour, and pencil. In Once Upon a Time it is traced on the earthy, absorbent surface of MDF. Despite this substance’s organic appearance it is, ironically, toxic if inhaled – if advertising has taught us nothing else, looks can be deceiving! The world of these paintings is visually beguiling in a way that invites continued, lotus-eating contemplation. There is, too, a faint whiff of sexuality beneath the hay and horse manure, reminiscent of that maxim of the advertising world which presents itself in products of all kinds: sex sells.
This is the kind of spectation that art historian Harmon Siegel in his essay ‘“Avant- Garde” means racing past the finish line’ (2025) distinguishes as “looking” rather than “watching”. In a horse race, which one “watches”, the finish line is clear. In both producing and “looking” at art, the end point is more ambiguous. Jäntti delights in averting completion; his aquarel lines having been liberated from his brush, they continue to flow wetly across the surface. In an instrumentalisation of horror vacui central subjects are left as silhouettes, inviting extended daydreaming about their contents. Luminescent pigments that advance towards the eye are placed in the background, while the foreground is often in muted mattes – unsettling the eye and capturing it in slight disquiet.
Jäntti thus both engages in the fantasy, and reminds us of the irreality of these pastoral visions. Without cynically mocking the emotional attachments that accompany consumption, the artist hints at how those attachments are manufactured, stylised, and sold back to us. Delicately (un)setting a mutable, fluid scene, Jäntti reminds the viewer of the discomfort of these inescapable bargains. Full of empty space and pigment that soaks in small, untameable fringes through their textured surfaces, his paintings’ temporality, figure, and perspective are as edge- blurred as the equine participants in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe or Kentucky Derby as they rush by.
Ella Krivanek
New prints available at Slash editions
Artist Register of the Artists’ Association of Finland
Education
2020–2022 Pedagogical Studies for Teachers in the Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, Finland2013–2019 Meisterschüler der Künste (MFA), Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany
2018 MFA programme in studio art, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 – Put on a Happier Face, Hilbertraum, Berlin, Germany2025 – Slash launch exhibition, Mayer Pavilion, Berlin, Germany
2025 – The Tides of Lethe, Berlin, Germany
2025 – Sprinter Biennale, Berlin, Germany
2025 – Suvi-Pinx, Sysmä, Finland
2025 – II., Toinen Silmä, Helsinki, Finland
2024 – The Artist as Curator's Art vol.XIV, Schaufenster, Berlin, Germany
2024 – Suoja / Shelter, Toinen Silmä, Helsinki, Finland
2023 – Softpower private collection, Berlin, Germany
2023 – Superdruckmarkt, Berlin, Germany
2023 – Oulu Music Video Festival, Oulu, Finland
2023 – Art Center Salmela, competition for young artists, Mäntyharju, Finland
2023 – Roaminale #2, roam space, Berlin, Germany
2022 – Vague, Hilbertraum, Berlin, Germany
2022 – Reykjavik Arts Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland
2022 – Heads, Gallery Marianne Heller, Heidelberg, Germany
2018 – Mänttä Art Festival 2018, Mänttä, Finland
2018 – GIFC, Fisher Parrish, Brooklyn, USA
2018 – Showpiece by pro temp, Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, Denmark
Duo Exhibitions
2025 – finish line, B Gallery, Turku, Finland2025 – in all directions, Teile 2064, Berlin, Germany
2024 – Laine & Jäntti feat. Outi Heiskanen, Voipaala Art Centre, Valkeakoski, Finland
2024 – Smuggling, Art Center Salmela, Mäntyharju, Finland
2024 – Automatic, Paja Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2022 – Premiere of Et le passé revit le temps d’une visite, Schwartzsche Villa, Berlin, Germany
Solo Exhibitions
2026 – Once Upon a Time, Miettinen Collection, Berlin, Germany2025 – Interplay, Galleria Loisti, Helsinki, Finland
2025 – Free Spirit, Finnish Glass Biennale, Riihimäki, Finland
2025 – Collisions, Vallilan Panimo, Helsinki, Finland
2022 – Slow Down - Gnomes at Play, Galleri Apoteket, Romakloster, Sweden
2020 – Unicorn Stories, Finnland Institut in Deutschland, Berlin, Germany
2018 – Trampoliini – Trampolinen, ARTag Galerie, Helsinki, Finland
2017 – I.M.M.J. – It's the Most Marvellous Joy, VAERK_stedet, Copenhagen, Denmark
Residency
2026 – Miettinen Collection, Berlin, Germany2020 – Tapiola Guest studio, The Finnish Artists’ Studio Foundation, Espoo, Finland
Memberships
Finnish Painters‘ UnionSelected Grants and Prizes
2023 – Aue Stiftung2022 – Paulo Foundation
2022 – Elsa-Neumann-Stipendium des Landes Berlin
2021 – Neustart Kultur - Stiftung Kunstfonds
2021 – Alli Paasikivi Foundation
2021 – Project grant, City of Espoo
2020 – Arts Promotion Centre Finland
2020 – Finnish Art Society, Young Artist Grant
2020 – Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse
2020 – Alfred Kordeliin Foundation
2019 – PLAYGROUND ART PRIZE 2019 (Nomination)
2017 – Märkisches Stipendium (Nomination)