Country: Lithuania - Sweden

Joakim Ojanen (b. 1985 Västerås, Sweden) received his BA in 2012 from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, and his MFA in 2014 from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. Since then, he has exhibited widely from Stockholm to Los Angeles, Cologne and Paris, Edinburgh and Belgium. He is represented by Christian Larsen in Stockholm, Ruttkowski 68 in Paris and Cologne, and Richard Heller in Los Angeles.

In terms of technique, Ojanen continues to explore what started as a self-taught exploration in clay and has become more sophisticated over the years. The texture has a handmade finger-hewn lumpiness; the heads are just about as big as you can make without advanced engineering; they are inventive but not improvisational, clearly a lot of time was spent on getting just the right expression and look in the eyes for each one. The detailing is fanciful: one figure’s blue-lipped grin looks like he was drinking raspberry Slurpees, and everyone has pronounced arm hair; little moments of inventiveness pop in from a dog’s tiny poo to a beer label or a Yayoi Kusama t-shirt.

Follow Joakim on Instagram: @joakimojanen
Website: www.joakimojanen.com