Leinonen & Sakkinen have finally tackled the issue of Capitalist Realism. They have entered into the business of relentless freedom and the FREE WORLD is their trademark. They postulate the land of milk and honey, breakfast cereal and burgers (cola included) and take the stage as a Finnish version of Bouvard & Pécuchet. Both psych each other up, spur each other on and at times even scold one another with a good box on the ear. With encyclopaedic industriousness, they paint, stick, construct, readjust and illuminate the world. They envelop it incessantly with their capital-informed message that the history of colonialism has just begun. After all, capitalism no longer means war but complacency. With liberal libertinism, they entirely exploit toy advertisements, the war against terrorism (for, there’s no business like show business and no damage like collateral damage), cornflakes, ice cream, candy bars and sexual services, as well as popular icons such as Ronald McDonald or the Elovena farmer girl. Anyone and everything is employed in the joint venture for the collective good, especially because, in the end, one is forced to accept the fact that Human Rights damage our Economy and sweatshops are cosy and warm. Whether their work should be described as Agit Pop, or Franchise Painting is of little importance. With no alternative in sight, Jani Leinonen & Riiko Sakkinen delve into the depths of the market economy’s pictorial world and relentlessly, though always according to the rules, drive it toward its uttermost limits. Sign up right now and join the FREE WORLD this very day!

Riiko Sakkinen makes exhibitions all around the globe. From New York to Helsinki, via Austin, Madrid and Paris he uses satire and perverts the aesthetic of publicity to humourously criticize our society. We navigate in a horrifying and fascinating world, born from the unexpected breeding of a commercial paradise and an acidic cynicism.

Riiko Sakkinen's installation at Bourouina gallery presents a stinging and witty look at the fourtiest birthday of the student revolt of 68.

The large self-promoting media exposure of the '68 generation', shown through an abundance of articles, books, radio and television shows or corporate sponsored exhibitions, seems far off the 'spirit of May'. The veterans of 68 became the 'caviar leftists'. They realize that their hair is turning grey, skimming through their old photographic albums with nostalgia. Mitterrand was wrong when he described the revolting students as 'future notarians', when indeed future politicians and future press barons were rioting…

Yesterday's revoltionaries adjusted themselves to the social and economic order they used to condemn in their '68' slogans. If the slogan 'unfettered pleasure' had a long lasting success, the more idealistic 'no more consumers society' or 'be realistic, ask for the impossible' seem nowadays totally outdated by Guy Debord's “Entertainment Society”*.

Broken up and distorted by Riiko Sakkinen, these old slogans become the wry mantras of the spirit of May 2008.

* In 1967, Guy Debord, founder of the situationist movement published "The Entertainment Society", an essay that became a reference of the 'may 68' student revolt.