Emma Luukkala @ HAM Gallery - Helsinki Art Museum - "Night Wash" Exhibition

Emma Luukkala: Night Wash

HAM Gallery, Helsinki 

20 September - 9 November 2025

Emma Luukkala

Night Wash, 2025 (detail)

Photo: Emma Luukkala

In her HAM gallery exhibition, EMMA LUUKKALA ponders the overlap between the sacred and the everyday. Life flows in endless piles of things and to-do lists, with moments of meaning, intense in their brightness, at the heart of the chaos.

Jobs I’ve done today: swept the floors, folded the laundry, and moved things from place to place. From somewhere, I can hear a blackbird singing.

Not even the grandest and most solemn situations are pure and uncontaminated by the outside world – they are always adorned with everyday chores and annoying dirt. Emma Luukkala asks what sacred could mean in a new materialist context, where the world is not divided dualistically into the superior spiritual and the inferior material, but instead consists of a wide range of intertwined players.

EMMA LUUKKALA (b. 1992) is a Helsinki-based artist who uses painting materials in a variety of ways, combining flat blocks of colour with relief details. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. In recent years, her work has been exhibited at venues including Jyväskylä Art Museum, Kunsthalle Helsinki, tm•gallery and Galerie Anhava.

HAM GALLERY - HELSINKI ART MUSEUM

Eteläinen Rautatiekatu 8, 00100 Helsinki

www.hamhelsinki.fi

Harri Koskinen @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Magnitude" Exhibition

Harri Koskinen: Magnitude

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

August 22 – September 21, 2025

 

Harri Koskinen one of Finland’s most renowned designers, presents a new exhibition shaped by compelling, multi-layered themes that navigate borderlands between the mythical and the contemporary. Elements subtly reminiscent of survival gear suggest preparation for an uncertain future, serving as a quiet reminder of today’s volatile global climate. At the same time, the exhibition drifts into the realm of myth and adventure. Rather than creating ominous imagery, Harri Koskinen explores the delicate tension between the material form and conceptual depth of his work.

The exhibition presents a selection of unique glass sculptures, both free-blown and mold-cast. Glass, with its reactive sensitivity, naturally lends itself to the creation of multi-layered forms. As a material born from the transformation of sand through intense heat, then cooled into solid form, glass inherently embodies shifting states of matter. Koskinen’s minimalist visual vocabulary resonates beautifully with the fragility of his medium. Most of the featured sculptures were handcrafted at the historic glassworks in Iittala and Riihimäki, with select pieces produced in Switzerland. This marks Koskinen’s fifth solo exhibition at Galerie Forsblom.

HARRI KOSKINEN (b. 1970), is a highly versatile designer known for his conceptual approach. His practice spans both serial production and one-offs. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has served as design director at Iittala and collaborated with prestigious international brands including Artek, Genelec, Hermès, Issey Miyake, Muu, and Svenskt Tenn. Among his many accolades are the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize, the Compasso d’Oro Award, and the Pro Finlandia Medal. Harri Koskinen lives and works in Espoo and Helsinki.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Rauha Mäkilä @ Helsinki Contemporary - "Syksy 2025" (Autumn 2025) Exhibition

Rauha Mäkilä 

Syksy 2025 (Autumn 2025)

Helsinki Contemporary

5 - 28 September 2025

Rauha Mäkilä

Photo courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Rauha Mäkilä

Tavantakainen, 2025

Oil on canvas, 80,5 cm x 60,5 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Rauha Mäkilä, courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Rauha Mäkilä

Piilovaihe, 2025

Oil on canvas, 71 cm x 51 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Rauha Mäkilä, courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Rauha Mäkilä’s solo exhibition Syksy 2025 (Autumn 2025) presents new works united by a common theme: exploring memories through painting.

Rauha Mäkilä draws inspiration from visual notes and photographs, transforming fleeting snapshots of fast-paced moments into painterly form. Unfolding slowly and deliberately, her paintings emphasise process, materiality, colour and composition.

For Rauha Mäkilä, painting is an antidote to the perfection-driven flood of digital images. Like a book, a painting demands time: it can challenge us, and transport us to another place and time.

Rauha Mäkilä

Halloween 2024, 2025

Oil on canvas, 240 cm x 200 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Rauha Mäkilä, courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Rauha Mäkilä

Chaplin 1982, 2024

Oil on canvas, 230 cm x 200 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Rauha Mäkilä, courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Colour is often her point of departure. As she paints, Rauha Mäkilä tests how colours interact to generate different moods and spaces. Too much harmony can be dull. Instead, rhythmic shifts, small imperfections, and even deliberately “wrong” colour choices create compositional vitality. Her works are always constructed in the language of painting: in the brushstrokes across the canvas, in the connections between shapes and colours, in the ways diverse elements support one another, and in what they ultimately convey.

Some of Mäkilä’s new works depict sculptures; others are “meta-paintings,” or paintings of paintings. These do not comment on the art world as such, but probe deeper questions of perception: how we see, what we value, and why. In the end, Mäkilä’s practice reminds us that what we encounter is not reality, but a constructed image—above all, a painting.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Eija-Liisa Ahtila @ Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris - "On Breathing" Exhibition

Eija-Liisa Ahtila: On Breathing 

Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris 

September 5 – October 4, 2025 

Voir la version en Français

Eija-Liisa Ahtila

On Breathing, 2024 

Single channel installation. Image 4K UHD 

Audio 2.0. 9 min. 45 sec. en boucle. Crystal Eye 2024 

© Eija-Liisa Ahtila, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery

Marian Goodman Gallery Paris presents a new exhibition by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, which features the French premiere of two new large-scale video installations, On Breathing and APRIL ≈ 61°01' 24°27', 2024. A master of cinematic installations, Ahtila challenges the idea of moving image perspective and constructs an experience of several co-existing temporalities and spaces for the viewers. A continuation of her research over the last decade, the works in the exhibition each explore in their own way forms of ecological narrative and their modes of presentation. Since abandoning a more anthropocentric viewpoint, Ahtila has been seeking to make visible the non-human world, with a focus on trees in particular. While On Breathing depicts the subtle intertwinement of tree branches with the morning mist, APRIL captures the silent passage of one season to the next through spatial movements among the trees and the attentive observation of a forest ecosystem.

On the ground floor of the gallery, the nine-minute projection On Breathing, 2024,is a visual poem in which the focus is the slow and hypnotic movement of the evaporative mist surrounding an oak tree. This morning phenomenon is typical of autumn and winter conditions when the sea remains warmer than the surrounding air and ground. The displacement of the fog and its sound in the branches poetically suggest a vegetal respiration: "The air around the oak tree seems tangible, and the space inside it becomes actual, as if the breathing of the tree were, for a moment, perceivable."

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, who frequently deploys multi-channels and split-screen installations to simultaneously unfold several aspects of one narrative, superimposes layers of video to conjure different temporalities. The wandering of the fog and its interplay with the leaves, the rhythm and the camera angles, all result in a unique, animated tableau.

Considering her recent works as a continuum, Eija-Liisa Ahtila notes that each creative process naturally leads to the next. Since 2011, she has gradually replaced human protagonists with trees and living organisms, resulting in a series of works that address the ecological narrative within the moving image. This new direction questions the contemporary relationship between nature and humanity, as well as the artificial boundary between us and other living beings. "I have attempted to develop visual approaches and methods of storytelling that might show us a way out of anthropocentrism and enable the presence of nonhuman species in our imaginary."

On the gallery lower level, APRIL ≈ 61°01' 24°27', 2024, first exhibited at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, immerses the visitors in the forest of Aulanko Nature Park, Finland, near Ahtila's hometown. Known as a natural environment unsullied by human activity, the forest was filmed for two consecutive seasons in 2022 and 2023, between the end of March and May. If the title of the work evokes the month associated with the regeneration of nature, the 12-meter-long, 8-channel installation shows the subtle transition from late winter to summer. The suite of eight sequences follows a chronological order, showing the forest from the first moments of snowmelt on the left to the premature arrival of summer on the far right.

The scale and horizontal nature of the installation are reminiscent of her iconic work Horizontal, 2011, which came from her desire to represent a giant spruce tree in its entirety. Eija-Liisa Ahtila not only chose to capture the tree by filming it in several horizontal sections, thus avoiding the distortions inherent in the use of a wide-angle lens, but she also decided to present the tree as an horizontal installation on a series of 6 projection screens.

With APRIL, the forest as an ecosystem - where trees and a multitude of organisms and plants constantly interact with each other -  is, for the first time, the center of the artist's attention. The source of the work stems from life in a forest where each singular being is an integrated element of the whole, and the whole is simulaneously within that singular being. To create a cinematic language suited to her subject that immerses us in the forest, the camera movements in the eight sections are fluid and asynchronous, alternating between slow motion and momentary stops. "The theme of APRIL is the spatiality of being, the constant change and shape-taking of the forest, that is its fundamental quality," says Eija-Liisa Ahtila.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila was born in Hämeenlinna, Finland in 1959. She has been honored with numerous prizes over the past two decades that include, most recently, becoming Commander, First Class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland (2020). She works and lives in Helsinki.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila's work has been widely exhibited since the early 1990s. Horizontal is prominently featured in The Power of Trees, on view until 14 September 2025 at Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens, Richmond, near London. Most recently she has had solo exhibitions at Serlachius Manor, Finland (2024); Kröller-Müller Museum (2024), The Netherlands; the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, US (2022); the National Gallery of Art, Vilnus, Lithuania (2021); the M Museum, Leuven, Belgium and the Serlachius Museum Gösta, Mänttä, Finland (both 2018). She has also had solo exhibitions at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia (2017); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2016); Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York and Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (both 2015); Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland (2013); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2012); Carré D'Art, Nîmes, France (2012); Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico (2012); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (2011); Parasol Unit, London, UK (2010); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2008), amongst many others. Ahtila was a jury member at the Venice Film Festival in 2011 and the President of the Jury at the FIDMarseille in 2013 (Festival international de cinéma de Marseille).

MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY

79 rue du Temple, 75003 Paris

www.mariangoodman.com

Raili Tang @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Raili Tang

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

August 22 – September 21, 2025

Raili Tang’s latest paintings literally capture interwoven layers of time. Originally created in 1996 for an exhibition at Lahti Art Museum, the first iterations were inspired by train rides between Helsinki and Lahti, as Raili Tang gazed out the window at passing fields, barns, and forests. Now, thirty years later, she has returned to these same canvases, using them as the foundation for new artistic explorations. For Tang, the painted surface—built up through countless layers of color and intricate detail—remains her enduring source of inspiration.

In this renewed body of work, expressive floral motifs once again emerge from Tang’s abstract backgrounds. Some of her blooms stand upright in vases; others sprout from the earth itself. Among them are radiant orchids, painted in the spirit of German Expressionist Emil Nolde (1867–1956), alongside humble dandelions pushing up through cracks in the pavement. The theme of time’s passage is deeply embedded not only in the imagery, but in the very making of the works—some of the smaller floral compositions are built on backgrounds that Tang painted during her student years at the Academy of Fine Arts.

A master colorist, Raili Tang weaves a universe of details born from the interplay of pigments. The best way to experience her work is slowly: the layers of paint are like quiet clues, scattered breadcrumbs that lead to small, meaningful revelations. Her droplets of paint, nuanced brushstrokes, and vibrant hues capture a wide emotional spectrum—mirroring life itself.

Raili Tang (b. 1950) has exhibited extensively both in Finland and abroad. Her work is held in several of Finland’s most prestigious collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Sara Hildén Art Museum, the Wihuri and Saastamoinen Foundations, and HAM Helsinki Art Museum. Raili Tang was awarded the Pro Finlandia Medal in 2015.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Stephan Balkenhol @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Stephan Balkenhol

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

August 22 – September 21, 2025

The minimalist sculptures of German artist Stephan Balkenhol radiate a quiet, archaic power. Though his figures often assume formal poses and wear expressionless faces, they are anything but detached. Instead, they convey a restrained yet compelling intensity. Balkenhol’s primary focus is the human condition—whether his subjects are actual people or animals dressed in human clothing, they serve as reflections of humanity. He deliberately preserves the visible marks of his carving tools, giving each figure a tactile roughness that underscores its vulnerability. Sculpted from a single block of wood—typically soft poplar or Douglas fir—each work embraces natural cracks and coarse textures, foregrounding the imperfections that define what it means to be human.

Stephan Balkenhol is widely recognized as one of today’s foremost contemporary sculptors. In the early 1980s, he broke away from the dominant abstract and conceptual art movements of the time, turning instead toward figurative expression. Since then, the human form—and the existential questions it evokes—has remained central to his practice. While clearly representational, Balkenhol’s works resist literal interpretation, inviting viewers into open-ended encounters.

Stephan Balkenhol (b. 1957) studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg and has served as a professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste in Karlsruhe since 1992. His sculptures are held in major international collections, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, Kunsthalle Hamburg, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Karlsruhe, Kassel, and Berlin, as well as in Meisenthal, France.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Gunnel Wåhlstrand @ Turku Art Museum, Finland

Gunnel Wåhlstrand 

Turku Art Museum 

Through 14 September 2025 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Photographer: Mikael Olsson 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND 

Rose, 2020 

Ink-wash on paper, 125 x 154 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Wave, 2015

Ink-wash on paper, 245 x 160 cm

Private Collection

Photograph: Per-Erik Adamsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

The Last Island, 2012 

Ink-wash on paper, 157 x 218 cm

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Jean-Baptiste Béranger

Gunnel Wåhlstrand, one of Sweden’s most prominent contemporary artists, is known for her large-scale ink-wash paintings that depict memories, people, and landscapes with photographic precision and poetic sensitivity. Her works are rooted in her own personal history and explore memory, the connections between past and present, and the quiet depths of human existence.

Painting with ink on large paper is a slow, meditative process that demands the utmost precision. Gunnel Wåhlstrand does not paint the darkest darks right away; instead, the lights, shadows, and subtle tones in between emerge from the interplay between the saturation of the ink, the many transparent layers, and the light-bearing space of the paper. The irreversible method allows no room for error, and being aware of these risks helps the artist maintain focus. Through patient repetition, Gunnel Wåhlstrand creates mesmerizingly beautiful worlds that convey a sense of intense presence. Gunnel Wåhlstrand can spend up to six months committed to each painting, and her production is purposefully sparse—54 works in the past 23 years. 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Mother Profile, 2009

Ink-wash on paper, 188,5  x 137,5 cm

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

White Peacock, 2007-2009

Ink-wash on paper, 109 x 160 cm 

Private Collection

Photograph: Björn Larsson

Gunnel Wåhlstrand bases her work on her personal history, photographs from her family album, and, more recently, her own snapshots of places saturated with memory. For over a decade, her art has sought to bridge the distance to her father, who took his own life when she was just one year old. His death was not talked about in the family, and even as a child, Gunnel Wåhlstrand turned to old family photographs in an attempt to understand him. The large scale of the paintings and the painstaking working method evolved from the artist’s deep need to linger in the process and immerse herself in the world of these images. Transcending time and space, her paintings interweave the gazes of different generations—gazes shaped by absence and distance. In her more recent works, the artist’s own experiences and memories of the photographed places merge with the intimate, inner world of the painted landscapes. The linear passage of time seems to shift, as if opening toward eternity.

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

Långedrag, 2004

Ink-wash on paper, 209 x 157 cm / 192 x 140 cm 

Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

The Desk, 2004 

Ink-wash on paper, 206 x 157  cm

Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation 

Maria Bonnier Dahlins Stiftelse 

GUNNEL WÅHLSTRAND

By the Window, 2003

Ink-wash on paper, 151 x 198 cm

Collection Michael Storåkers 

Photograph: Björn Larsson

The artist’s first solo exhibition in Finland presents works spanning her entire career from 2002 to 2023. The works are on loan from private and public collections, including Andréhn-Schiptjenko Gallery, the Maria Bonnier Dahlin Foundation, Magasin III Museum of Contemporary Art, Malmö Art Museum, the Nordic Watercolour Museum, and the Sten A. Olsson Foundation. The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde and curated by Selina Kiiskinen and Kari Immonen from Turku Art Museum.

Gunnel Wåhlstrand (b. 1974, Uppsala) lives and works in Stockholm. She made her breakthrough immediately after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 2003. Her recent solo exhibitions have been held at Prince Eugen’s Waldemarsudde (2024), Gothenburg Art Museum (2019), Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (2017), and Magasin III in Stockholm (2017).

TURKU ART MUSEUM

Aurakatu 26, 20100 Turku

turuntaidemuseo.fi

Gunnel Wahlstrand

Turku Art Museum , 6 June –14 September 2025

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt @ Serlachius Museum, Mänttä

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt

Serlachius Museum, Mänttä 

Through 17 August 2025

Master I.S.

Portrait of an Old Woman, 1651

Oil on panel, 41 x 33 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wienna

Photo: © KHMMuseumsverband

Master I.S.

Young Scholar Half-naked, 1638

Oil on panel, 54 x 40 cm 

Private collection 

Photo: David Bassenge

Master I.S.

Old Woman Reading a Letter, 1658

Oil on panel, 50 x 35 cm 

Nationalmuseum Stockholm

Photo: Nationalmuseum, Anna Danielsson

Who was the mysterious artist who signed their works in the 17th century with the monogram I.S.? The research project and exion, hibition by Serlachius and the Dutch Museum De Lakenhal present, for the first time, the works of this contemporary of Rembrandt. 

The artist who signed their works with the monogram I.S. is believed to have resided in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands during the 1620s and 1630s. Their works show significant influences from renowned Dutch artists Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, who lived and worked in the city c. 1625–1630/31.

Jan Lievens 

Old Man, c. 1625/1626 

Oil on panel, 53,5 x 47,2 cm

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wienna 

Photo: © KHMMuseumsverband

Gerrit Dou

Self-portrait of the Painter in His Studio, c. 1632 

Oil on panel, 60,5 x 44 cm 

Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 

Purchased with the support of the 

Vereniging van Belangstellenden in Museum De Lakenhal, 

support from the Vereniging Rembrandt 

and a private donation 

Photo: Museum De Lakenhal

The new research project has explored the artist’s works and identity more extensively than ever before. The research began with the Serlachius Seminar held in spring 2022, the topics of which included the Fine Arts Foundation’s old European art.

With the international research project, c. 25 paintings have been identified that are known or believed to be created by Master I.S. Some of the works have disappeared and are known only from black-and-white photographs. The exhibition is the first in which a significant part of the artist’s work has been gathered in one place. After Serlachius, the exhibition will continue in October at Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.

The Serlachius exhibition includes eighteen paintings from various collections across Europe and from Canada. Fourteen of these are attributed to Master I.S. Additionally, the exhibition features four other paintings that provide a basis for comparison of the works. These works are by Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou, and David Bailly.

The exhibition is curated by Tomi Moisio, Curator at Serlachius Museums. The Leiden exhibition is curated by Janneke van Asperen, Curator of Old Masters at Museum De Lakenhal.

Master I.S. 

Old Man with a Fur Hat, 1640s 

Oil on canvas, 42 x 35,5 cm 

Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation. 

Photo: The Finnish National Gallery, Yehia Eweis

Master I.S.

Old Woman in Three-Quarter Profile, 1640–1645 

Oil on panel, 47 x 38 cm

Private collection 

Photo: Eva Steentjes

The artist’s identity remains a mystery

The Serlachius collection includes a work purchased from London in 1937, Old Man in a Fur Hat (1640s), previously attributed to Jan Lievens (1607–1674). The research project has strengthened the notion that the creator might be Master I.S.

The artist often depicts elderly people in great detail and without embellishment. The models are characterised by a melancholic, sideways gaze. Their works feature costumes, details, and interiors that suggest Eastern European or Scandinavian origins.

“Perhaps they are from that region and came to study in Leiden, for example. Alternatively, they may have travelled in Eastern or Northern Europe”, says Tomi Moisio.

So far, the identity of the artist who signed their works with the pseudonym I.S. has not been discovered. Research continues, and the interest of international art historians has brought new information about their works. At the same time, their value has increased.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication in which experts in the field explore the mystery of Master I.S. and make comparative research on artist-contemporaries. The articles in the book have been written by curators Tomi Moisio and Janneke van Asperen, as well as the distinguished specialists on old Dutch and Flemish art, professors Volker Manuth and Marieke de Winkel. 

The research group has also included David de Witt, the Chief Curator at Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam. The book is published in English, as it is expected to be of great interest to the international academic community.

SERLACHIUS MUSEUM

Serlachius Manor, Joenniementie 47, Mäntä

serlachius.fi

Master I.S. – The Enigmatic Contemporary of Rembrandt

Serlachius Museum, Mänttä, Finland, 12 April - 17 August 2025

Keith Tyson: Universal Symphony @ Serlachius Museum, Mäntä

Keith Tyson: Universal Symphony

Serlachius Museum, Mäntä

Through 26 October 2025

KEITH TYSON

Installation view from the exhibition

Universal Symphony

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

Installation view from the exhibition

Universal Symphony

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

Installation view from the exhibition

Universal Symphony

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

In the art of British artist Keith Tyson, everything is surprisingly interconnected and without hierarchy. This is also indicated by the name of his exhibition, Universal Symphony.

Defining KEITH TYSON (b. 1969) as an artist is challenging, as he is not interested in recognisable style or self-expression. He has always been fascinated by the interstices between art, science and technology, how things are connected and how one thing leads to another. 

In his works, Tyson examines the different forces, relationships and processes we use to understand the world and through which things and phenomena gain meaning. These include, for example, various physical and chemical chains of events, language models and algorithms used by artificial intelligence, and the latest achievements in quantum physics, but also poetry and mythology.

KEITH TYSON

Installation view from the exhibition

Universal Symphony

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

16m3 of Ocean (Atlantic), 2024

Courtesy the artist

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

16m3 of Ocean (Atlantic), 2024 (detail)

Courtesy the artist

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

According to the exhibition’s curator, Timo Valjakka, Keith Tyson sees art as an attempt to express what cannot be conveyed in other ways. His works are based on knowledge and emotion as well as on the viewer’s experience in front of them. One example of this is the monumental 16m3 of Ocean (Atlantic), 2024. The bronze sculpture is an accurate representation not only of the surface of the ocean, but also of its mass.

Majority of the works in the exhibition are new and on display for the first time. They are placed in context by a number of earlier works. Four of them were implemented with the help of the Art Machine, developed by Keith Tyson in the 1990s, and challenge us to consider the relationship between humans and machines. 

Art Machine is a set of algorithms programmed into a computer. When the Art Machine processes the material fed to it according to the given conditions, it produces a set of instructions for Tyson to implement the artwork. The instructions include the subject of the work, dimensions, materials and other parameters required at any given time. 

KEITH TYSON

Installation view from the exhibition

Universal Symphony

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

Nature Painting (Deep Impact), 2010

Courtesy of the artist

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

The large-scale Nature Painting (Deep Impact), 2010, on the other hand, was created as a result of the combined effects of gravity, fluid dynamics and chemical reactions. In doing so, Keith Tyson relinquished almost all control of the process and let the chemicals carve out their own paths. He calls the work a nature painting because it is not an image of nature, but a manifestation of the forces that shape nature.

KEITH TYSON

Scholar's Stonei, 2023

Patined bronze

Courtesy of the artist

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

KEITH TYSON

Dark Sundial, 2024

Bronze, stainless steel, electronic guidance,

motor, stone plinth

Courtesy of the artist

Photograph: Serlachius, Sampo Linkoneva

On display in the Serlachius Manor’s Park is the kinetic sculpture Dark Sundial (2024), where Keith Tyson has replaced the traditional worldview represented by a sundial with an incomparably larger one. The long index finger of the stylised human figure shows us at every moment where the massive black hole Sagittarius A* is in the centre of the Milky Way. It is 27,000 light-years from Mänttä.

ARTIST KEITH TYSON

After his early studies in engineering, Keith Tyson pursued art at Carlisle College of Art in 1989 and at the University of Brighton from 1990 to 1993. He held his first solo exhibitions in London and New York in 1996.

Keith Tyson has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in museums and galleries across various countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and South Africa. He has also taken part in the Berlin and Venice Biennale in 2001 and the São Paulo Biennale in 2002. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize. He was named an Honorary Doctor of the University of Brighton in 2005.

Curator of the exhibition: Timo Valjakka

SERLACHIUS MUSEUM

Serlachius Manor, Joenniementie 47, Mäntä

serlachius.fi

Keith Tyson: Universal Symphony 

Serlachius Museum, Mäntä, 24 May – 26 October 2025

Marjatta Tapiola @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Metamorphoses" Exhibition of Paintings

Marjatta Tapiola: Metamorphoses

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

June 6 – August 17, 2025

Marjatta Tapiola often takes inspiration for her paintings from literature, from sources such as the Greek Minotaur myth or the work of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Rather than depicting these venerable literary sources literally, she uses them as a vehicle for dealing with themes such as the brutality of life and what it means to be human, exploring emotions, hopes and experiences familiar to everyone.

The exhibition provides a review of Tapiola’s recent oil paintings and works on paper, this time drawing inspiration from selected extracts of poetry by the German-born writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) and Autobiography of Red (1998) by the Canadian novelist Anne Carson (b. 1950). Foremost among Tapiola’s sources of literary inspiration are the epic myths of Metamorphoses originally published in Latin by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE-18 CE). The classic magnum opus is said to contain almost everything ever written in subsequent literature.

Ovid’s imaginative, sometimes tragic and sometimes humorous tales have inspired countless artists ever since Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. Marjatta Tapiola is a contemporary artist who interprets Ovid’s powerful verses from her own personal point of view. The task has been a challenging one, and the results are surprising, as always – even to those already familiar with Tapiola’s art. Sebald and Carson both draw on art history and ancient mythology, and their evocatively visual writing has provided Tapiola with fresh inspiration in her exploration of new visual frontiers.

Marjatta Tapiola (b. 1951) ranks among the leading Finnish painters of her generation. Among the many accolades she has received are the Pro Finlandia Medal, the Finnish Cultural Foundation Award in 2004, and the State Prize for Fine Arts in 2006. Her work is held in the Ateneum Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, and numerous other major public collections in Finland. Marjatta Tapiola is also an acclaimed portraitist.

GALERIE FORSBLOM, HELSINKI

Lönnrotinkatu 5, 00120 Helsinki
www.galerieforsblom.com

Jussi Goman @ Helsinky Contemporary - "Desire Path" Exhibition

Jussi Goman: Desire Path

Helsinki Contemporary

August 8 - 31, 2025

Jussi Goman

Desire Path, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 200 cm x 180 cm

Photo Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman

Where I Wasn't Going, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 200 cm x 180 cm

Photo Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman

Shown Twice, 2024 

Acrylic on canvas, 200 cm x 150 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman’s new paintings feature colour-drenched layers of paint that carve out unruly paths upon an orderly configuration of grids and lines. The resultant pattern is reminiscent of doodles in a graph notebook, a jigsaw puzzle, a Snake video game, or the Minotaur’s labyrinth, invoking spontaneous shortcuts, dead ends, and myriad narratives.

Jussi Goman (b. 1980) is in a class of his own in his command of colour and technique. His paintings are complex tapestries of lightness and heaviness, bold brushstrokes and delicate details. His new paintings combine dazzling, luminous hues with pastel blues and lavenders, with added accents of muted orange and red. The glassy acrylic surface provides a lively accompaniment to the lusciously textured brushwork. Adding further three-dimensionality to each canvas are the succulent acrylic impasto accents that have become a signature trademark of his style.

Jussi Goman

Runner, 2025 

Acrylic on canvas, 80 cm x 70 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman

Monolith, 2025 

Acrylic on canvas, 170 cm x 145 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman

Meanwhile Elsewhere, 2025 

Acrylic on canvas, 145 cm x 170 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman

Gathering, 2025 

Acrylic on canvas, 145 cm x 170 cm

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

© Jussi Goman. Courtesy Helsinki Contemprary

Jussi Goman draws inspiration both from mythology and everyday life. The creatures appearing in his compositions are reminiscent of the mischievous beasts in Aesop’s animal fables, beloved pets, or birds foraging in the garden. Whichever the case may be, the underlying idea is the same: greatness comes in small details, and every moment contains eternity. After all, the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sacred scarab, the lowly beetle that spends its day rolling balls of dung. Often it is the case that something we find instantly recognisable or makes us smile contains something deep and true within it. Guided by his intuition, the artist explores this territory, following an idiosyncratic path towards a goal that is initially unknown.

A shortcut, whether taken by a human or animal, is typically an unplanned path that represents the shortest or most convenient route between an origin and destination. There is a more poetic English term for a shortcut: ‘desire path’, which perfectly captures the way shortcuts are born: the best and most enduring paths are born out of desire, not by force.

‘Desire Path’ is Jussi Goman’s first solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary. He has previously appeared at Helsinki Contemporary together with Santeri Lehto and Anton Alvarez in the group exhibition ‘Not Enough Room to Swing a Cat’ (Post with a biography of Jussi Goman)

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Charles Sandison @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - New installation "Tabula Rasa" Exhibition

Charles Sandison: Tabula Rasa

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

June 6 – July 12, 2025

Charles Sandison’s new installation Tabula Rasa depicts words spilling out of open, empty books and moving towards each other in a continuous stream. The title refers to philosopher John Locke’s theory that humans begin life as a ‘blank slate’ onto which experiences and meanings are gradually imprinted. In Sandison’s Tabula Rasa, the blank slate is an ideological battlefield pitting words against each other as they compete to fill the empty pages.

The installation juxtaposes diametric opposites such as good and evil, love and hate. The word streams are controlled by a simple set of algorithms and driven by chance. The outcome of the ideological battle is unpredictable. The words begin to migrate more vigorously as their numbers dwindle, and it can take days for one word to take over all the books. When the process finally reaches its conclusion, the system resets and begins all over again.

Charles Sandison’s artistic practice addresses the themes of memory, linguistic structures and history, exploring cultural heritage and possible futures using contemporary digital technology. Employing generative code as his medium, his content comprises the entirety of our common cultural heritage and the ideological, artistic and philosophical ideas that have shaped contemporary society. The installation raises questions about power, freedom, the nature of knowledge and the process through which meaning is constructed – or deconstructed. Tabula Rasa is at once a visual spectacle, a philosophical commentary and a social allegory.

Scottish-born Charles Sandison (b. 1969) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1993. During a career now spanning over three decades, he has exhibited his work in public spaces around the world. Sandison’s work is held in numerous Finnish and international collections, including Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, and art museums in Denver, Montreal, Rome and Bonn. The artist lives and works in Tampere, Finland.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Martin Wickström @ Galerie Forsblom - "Tänd dina eldar" Exhibition

Martin Wickström

Tänd dina eldar

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

May 5 – June 1, 2025

Martin Wickström’s (b. 1957) art is situated at the intersection between past and present, private and collective. His kaleidoscopic imagery juxtaposes unexpected elements: arctic avens in timeless alpine scenery appear side by side with barrel fires in 1980s Harlem, and American Pop Art emblems are interspersed among wistful childhood memories of growing up in the safe arms of Sweden’s folkhemmet during the 1960s. Martin Wickström mixes disparate decades and geographies, intermixing images of the French Alps with scenes from the United States, Sweden and Kyoto. His paintings engage in close scrutiny of quotidian drama wherever it unfolds, whether in family dynamics or in the international political arena.

Martin Wickström combines a variety of elements in his work: documentary photography, everyday objects and emotional memories. He finds and highlights beauty in architecture and design. His paintings have a diary-like quality – they are like carefully assembled visual notebooks that reward the viewer with their depth and nuance. Their multidimensionality is also challenging; the non-linear narrative plays with various parallels and associations, hinting at a bigger picture behind everything. Wickström’s paintings are characterized by their photorealistic precision and rootedness in tangible reality, yet they also evoke the fleeting, fragmented nature of moments that have become obscured by unreliable memories.

Martin Wickström bases his paintings on photographs, collected images and digital experimentation with various combinations before he begins to paint. He draws inspiration from everyday life and personal experiences, from everything he sees, records and feels, and from everything that is happening around him in the world. His guiding motto is the text found on French road signs at the entrance of tunnels: “allumez vos feux,” or “turn on your lights,” which the artist poetically interprets as a call to action.

Martin Wickström studied at the Gerlesborg School of Fine Art and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He has exhibited widely around the world and his work is held in many prestigious collections, including Moderna Museet, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and the art museums of Gothenburg, Skövde and Norrköping.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Monira Al Qadiri: Deep Fate @ Kiasma, Helsinki

Monira Al Qadiri: Deep Fate

Kiasma, Helsinki

21 March - 7 September 2025

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Benzene Float (Para-Benzene), 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Benzene Float (Hexa-Benzene), 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Benzene Float (Kekulene), 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Benzene Float (Tetrakis), 2024

In the back left to right: Future past 3, 2023; NAWA, 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI’s art deals with what it feels like to live a modern life made possible by oil during the accelerating climate crisis. The starting point for her new exhibition is the way that this raw material formed over millions of years has been almost surreptitiously interwoven into human history and destiny. The subject is personal for her: Al Qadiri grew up next door to oil refineries in Kuwait and experienced the Gulf War as a child. Deep Fate is her first solo exhibition in the Nordic countries.

Oil is everywhere in our everyday lives – in fuels, clothes, toys, make-up, buildings and roads. We use it to heat homes and the climate. Wars have been fought over it.

Oil’s dual role in generating wealth and causing crises is a central theme in the new exhibition by artist Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983). The title, Deep Fate, refers to the origins of oil deep in the earth and also to the way that dependence on oil and breaking that dependence are a matter of life and death for humankind.

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Alien Technology (Diamond), 2023

Above: Benzene Float (Naphthalene), 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

NAWA (details from the series), 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

The Guardian, 2023

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Monira Al Qadiri’s working process is based on research on the cultural history of the Persian Gulf region. The exhibition features sculptures and video works from the last decade. Some of them are very large, while the smallest are only a centimetre in diameter. Various sculptures echo the shapes of the blades and the molecular structures of the chemicals used in oil drilling. Al Qadiri’s works are characterised by iridescent rainbow colours that are reminiscent of oil and the shimmering surface of pearls.

In her video works, Monira Al Qadiri often returns to her childhood experiences. For the child living close to an oil refinery, the industrial structure evoked thoughts of a glowing metropolis rather than of environmental destruction. Meanwhile, burning oil fields were her first conscious encounter with oil.

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Crude Eye, 2022

Video still 

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Deep Float, 2017

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Monira Al Qadiri’s works also contain references to the history of her family. Before the oil boom, one important source of livelihood in the region was pearl diving, in which her grandfather worked. In the 1950s, the oil industry lifted the small country of Kuwait out of poverty and into prosperity, and in so doing brought an end to the pearl-diving industry.

“The formation of oil has set a ‘fate’ deeply intertwined with human history and the exploitation of natural resources,” Monira Al Qadiri says of the idea behind her new exhibition.

“Just as the processes of deep time remain unseen but have clearly shaped our environment, the actions of the deep state remain obscured while shaping political and social realities, creating a narrative of extraction, exploitation, and the resulting crises – climatic, political, and social.”

The exhibition is curated by Kiasma’s curators Piia Oksanen and Jari-Pekka Vanhala.

MONIRA AL QADIRI - BIOGRAPHY

Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983, Dakar, Senegal) is a Kuwaiti artist educated in Japan. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

MONIRA AL QADIRI 

Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Her solo exhibitions include “The Archaeology of Beasts” (Bozar Brussels, 2024); “Benzene Float” (Halle Verriere, 2024); “Haunted Water” (UCCA Dune, 2023), “Mutant Passages” (Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2023); “Holy Quarter” (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2022); “Refined Vision” (Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, 2022); “Holy Quarter” (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2020); “Empire Dye” (Kunstverein Göttingen, 2019); “The Craft” (Gasworks, London, 2017); “Attempts to Read the World Differently” (Stroom Den Haag, the Hague, 2017); “Muhawwil” (Sultan Gallery, Kuwait, 2014).

Select group exhibitions include Desert X Al Ula (Al Ula, 2024); 24th Biennial of Sydney (Sydney, 2023–24); 8th Boras Biennial (Sweden, 2024); Sharjah Biennial 15 (Sharjah, 2023); 15th Triennial of Small Sculpture, Fellbach (2022); Asia Art Biennial, Taiwan (2021); Dubai Expo 2020 (2021); “Our World is Burning” (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2020); “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars” (MoMA PS1, New York, 2019–20); Asia Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, 2018); Lulea Biennial (Sweden, 2018); Athens Biennial (Athens, 2018). In 2022, Al Qadiri was featured in the Venice Biennale’s central exhibition “The Milk of Dreams.”

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma

Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki

kiasma.fi