Kelmin Lumo is a satirical visual artist hailing from Finland.
His works are inspired by street art, comics and urban pop culture.

Kelmin Lumo’s themes in art are often (but not always) socially critical.
He is strongly opposed to injustice and like to make his voice heard by the means of art.

“Kelmin Lumo” is Finnish and means “crook’s enchantment“.

Bio

Kelmin Lumo was born in 1977 to a working-class family in Lahti, where he lived his first years in the Saksala residential area.

His more advanced drawing skills were already noticed in the kindergarten, where he was the youngest.

Kelmin Lumo grew up in Hollola in a detached house area and attended elementary school in the same rural school as Ville Haapasalo (actor) and Jari Litmanen (soccer player).

There was artistic talent in the family. The mother, who painted with oil colors, encouraged her son to draw and paint. Kelmin Lumo also got inspiration from his uncle’s cartoons.

In elementary school, he received an honorable mention in the drawing competition organized by the municipality, being again exceptionally much more advanced than his peers in interpreting reality.

During junior high school, his interest was focused on hip hop and electronic dance music cultures, and soon DJing. Graffiti and oversized clothes became part of the life of the teenager in the early 90s.

Kelmin Lumo got excited about video production courses in high school so he went to study culture and arts in Kouvola. However, his interest in video production was replaced by web and graphic design, being closer to the profession of a commercial artist, which stood out from all professions a study guide presented to the class in junior high. The studies also included courses in drawing, painting, writing, screenwriting, photography and 3D-animation. Kelmin Lumo graduated as a Bachelor of Culture and Arts in 2003, but he didn’t participate in the graduation ceremony as a protest, because he felt the final thesis grade he received was unfair (which was also acknowledged, but not corrected). He also found the school’s teaching level to be generally poor, with only a few exceptions.

A return to more traditional fine art only happened in Dublin, Ireland in 2007. Perhaps it was a reaction to the submissive working relationship under the American company giant IBM. At that time, Banksy and a few other artists from around the world set an example that social issues can also be addressed with traditional art techniques.

After returning to Finland Kelmin Lumo started cutting stencils and spray painting also on canvases. He tried high-quality acrylic paint markers and fell in love with them as they felt like mini-sized spray cans in their coverage and gave new possibilities for working indoors.

Visual art became a channel to bring out opinions in a fun and interesting way. One recurring theme in Kelmin Lumo’s works is social criticism. Sly satire makes the viewer smile and challenges them to think. Sometimes it provokes. Cartoon-like characters are also glimpsed in the artworks.

Often perfectionist works look like they came from a printing press, but if you look more closely, you can find the imprint of an acrylic marker. He also paints with oil colors.

The artist name Kelmin Lumo consists of two words that he liked to drew on food and beverage cardboard packages and tagged on the sides of cardboard rolls while working on a printing press in 2000.

A few of my favorite…