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

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

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

Eeva-Riitta Eerola @ Helsinki Contemporary Gallery - "C" Exhibition

Eeva-Riitta Eerola: C

Helsinki Contemporary

11 April - 4 May 2025

Eeva-Riitta Eerola

Vessel (Garden) IV, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 90 cm x 90 cm

Photo: Erno Enkenberg

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Eeva-Riitta Eerola

Vessel (Garden) III, 2025

Oil on acrylic on canvas, 46 cm x 50 cm

Photo: Erno Enkenberg

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

EEVA-RIITTA EEROLAs paintings seem to materialize like apparitions, exuding effortless simplicity, but also a sense of potency. Echoing her desire to simplify, Eeva-Riitta Eerola has named her new exhibition after a single letter of the alphabet: C. This emblem can be read in many ways: as a visual symbol, as a phoneme, or even as a word. Visually, its shape both encloses and opens outwards, recalling the phase of the lunar cycle when the Moon is visible only as a narrow crescent. In ancient carvings, the map of the Garden of Eden is inscribed as a fertile crescent at the confluence of four rivers, or as a rounded vessel containing paradise.

Eeva-Riitta Eerola

Observer (Garden) III, 2025

Oil on acrylic on canvas, 42 cm x 33 cm

Photo: Erno Enkenberg

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Eeva-Riitta Eerola

Act (Garden) IV, 2025

Oil on acrylic on canvas, 50 cm x 80 cm

Photo: Erno Enkenberg

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Abstracted maps, streams and paths are among the prominent recurring elements in Eerola’s paintings, as are hands and eyes. The eye motif is significant in that the letter ‘C’ can represent the English verb ‘to see’, or its imperative form. Eerola’s paintings invite our gaze to roam and for us to immerse ourselves experientially. The eye and the hand can be interpreted as symbolizing the painting process: when painting is reduced to its basic essentials, the gaze and the manual gesture are the painter’s most important tools.

Eeva-Riitta Eerola’s paintings engage in close study of the way we humans experience images. She is interested in exploring painting’s ability to convey an experience of spatiality and presence. In her new exhibition, spatial experiences are conveyed through images of gardens. Eerola’s gardens are semi-abstract, however, representing more of a conceptual and symbolic space than a physical one.

Eeva-Riitta Eerola

Courtesy of Helsinki Contemporary

Eerola’s practice also reflects her interest in the history of painting. In the exhibition C, Eeva-Riitta Eerola has drawn inspiration from symbolism, an historic art movement that used symbolic images to suggest emotions and universal human experiences. She first became interested in symbolism after experiencing a death in her family as a teenager. What especially drew her to symbolism was its compelling manner of invoking death, life, continuity, finality and infinity. While preparing for this exhibition, Eeva-Riitta Eerola took inspiration from a beloved painting of her youth, The Garden of Death (1896) by Hugo Simberg, a small-scale depiction of skeletons tenderly caring for uncanny flowers in a garden situated somewhere between the living and the dead.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Emma Helle @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Dress Codes for Rivers" Exhibition

Emma Helle: Dress Codes for Rivers

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

March 28 – May 4, 2025

Emma Helle has drawn inspiration for the reclining figures in her new sculptures from personified river deities she has encountered on her travels, most recently in Roman fountains. Like many cities, Rome was founded on a river, for flowing water is literally the source of all life, but also a symbolic fount of fertility and prosperity. Throughout history, rivers have transported not only people and goods, but also thoughts and new ideas. Rome’s fountains pay tribute to the river running through the city and to the life-sustaining power of water.

In ancient Greek mythology, the father of all rivers was Oceanus, a bearded man with bull horns. Oceanus lost one horn in battle, which became the mythical horn of plenty, symbol of fertility and abundance. In Helle’s sculptures, the horn of plenty has emptied its contents all over the voluptuous, hedonistic figures, which are decked in flowers, vines, fruit, gilding and all manner of lavish details. The figures defy categorization, blending inseparably with their surroundings. Shaped from clay transported by flowing water, they are raw, imperfect, and coarsely textured, yet their surfaces shimmer in vibrant colors. They proclaim freedom and the right to revel in their inherent materiality.

Throughout art history, exotic fruits and plants have symbolized abundance, but also wealth and power. Helle’s sculptures seem to question what these symbols mean today, as they are are available to everyone on supermarket shelves. How have visual symbols of wealth and abundance changed in modern times, and who ultimately has the right to wield them?

Emma Helle (b.1979) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts. Her work is held in collections including HAM Helsinki Art Museum Ham, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the State Art Deposit Collection, Sara Hildén Art Museum, Saastamoinen Foundation and Wihuri Foundation. She recently held a solo exhibition at Turku Art Museum, and she has participated in group exhibitions at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the National Museum in Stockholm, Mänttä Art Festival, Helsinki Art Hall and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Stig Baumgartner @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Pyramid and Superego" Exhibition

Stig Baumgartner 

Pyramid and Superego 

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

March 28 – May 4, 2025 

The title of Stig Baumgartner’s new exhibition, Pyramid and Superego, alludes to hierarchical structures. The vibrantly colorful geometrical structures in his paintings are like monuments placed upon pedestals, some of them proudly balanced, others wobbly and imperfect. The artist describes monuments as images of social order; in his paintings, they embody either stability or turmoil.

Stig Baumgartner’s paintings typically possess a human or corporeal presence. Their architectural composition can be interpreted as mirroring the structures of the human mind or the concept of being human. Baumgartner’s art characteristically presents dialogues of opposites, combining expressive, calligraphic brushwork with precise, harmonious composition.

In the making of this exhibition, Stig Baumgartner found himself reflecting on artistic expression and career trajectory as a kind of monument in its own right. Work by work, the artist builds an increasingly sophisticated and unique structure of expression. At the apex shines a liberated peak that is built upon earlier works, both artist's own and those of other artists, and also upon the traditions of evolving art discourses. Each painting is always a unique event that combines acquired knowledge with personal experience. Artistic expression is invariably built upon a foregoing legacy, which can be either a burden or a liberation. Leaning towards the latter interpretation, Baumgartner hopes that his paintings will retain their ambiguous character as autonomous artistic creations.

Stig Baumgartner (b.1969) works in the tradition of abstract painting, paying homage to its legacy while at the same time boldly renewing it. Alongside his artistic practice, he is also a long-time lecturer in drawing and perception at the Academy of Fine Arts, the University of the Arts Helsinki. He completed his doctoral degree in 2015. Stig Baumgartner’s paintings are held in many of Finland’s most prestigious collections, including Saastamoinen Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Iria Leino @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - An undeservedly forgotten and undervalued artistic estate

Iria Leino

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

March 28 – May 4, 2025

Galerie Forsblom has been granted the rare opportunity to explore an undeservedly forgotten and undervalued artistic estate in which history is palpably present. The gallery presents an exhibition featuring IRIA LEINO, a pioneer of the 1960s New York art scene and a figure enigmatic to contemporary audiences.

Iria Leino (1932-2022) was a Helsinki-born artist and fifties supermodel who made her mark as a pioneer of abstract art. At the height of her international modelling career, she left the fashion world to settle in New York’s SoHo, where she forged an exceptional career as an abstract expressionist. Her artistic journey reflected the cultural and artistic upheavals of New York in the 1960s.

Iria Leino combines the influences of Color Field painting with a meditative style of brushwork. After surviving a serious accident in 1968, she turned to Buddhism, which added a spiritual dimension to her artistic practice. Exemplifying this spiritualism is The Elephant Series, in which elephants symbolize wisdom and enlightenment. Leino’s exhibitions were well received by contemporary critics, who praised her innovative, norm-defying style of abstract expressionism.

Iria Leino’s meditative approach to painting is epitomized by The Dreamings Series (1988-1989), in which spiritual dimensions are invoked by colorful arches and dotted details. Leino was a reclusive figure whose one-of-a-kind serial oeuvre owes its existence to her dedication to solitude and spiritual guidance. Leino fused elements of Finnish nature and design with the traditions of American abstract expressionism to create an enduring legacy that is unique in art history.

Iria Leino surrendered herself to a life of solitude, meditation, and the guidance of a spiritual guru, enabling her to perfect her idiom through steadfast dedication to painting serially. By interweaving cross-cultural influences – Finnish nature and design with American traditions of abstraction – she created an unprecedented legacy shared by Finland and the United States.

Related Post on Wanafoto:

Iria Leino: 1968–1970, Harper's, New York, September 4 – October 19, 2024

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Sanna Kannisto @ Helsinki Contemporary - "Gestures" Photography Exhibition

Sanna Kannisto: Gestures

Helsinki Contemporary 

14 March - 6 April 2025

SANNA KANNISTO

Sunflower, 2023

Pigment ink print

120 x 90 cm, edition of 7

Further option: 81 x 61 cm

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

SANNA KANNISTO

Preening

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

SANNA KANNISTO

Oriolus oriolus

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

Sanna Kannisto’s latest exhibition explores the gestures and unique personalities of birds through photography. Her avian photography is distinctive for her unusual technique of constructing field studios in natural settings. While shooting, she is attuned to the birds’ gestures, postures, and expressive presence. “Certain moments make photography meaningful to me, such as when a bird chirps, flutters its wings, grooms itself, cleans its beak, cranes its neck, competes for a place on the perch, peers at me with a certain look in its eye, or nestles up against a companion,” describes the artist.

Sanna Kannisto’s art engages in commentary with the history of portraiture, the still life genre, and traditions of scientific representation. Her photographs are the combined outcome of meticulous planning, surprise and chance. Some of her compositions are ‘hand-crafted’, combining multiple images or different moments in time. The thing that has always intrigued her about photography is the tension between reality and photographic representation. In the final stages of creating an image, Sanna Kannisto describes herself as striving to strike a balance between the natural and the artificial, or “constructs of naturalness”. “When I compose an image, I also construct a narrative, and the viewer then completes the story in their imagination,” says the artist.

SANNA KANNISTO

Garrulus glandarius

pigment ink-print maple frame, museum glass

1/7 - 61 x 81 cm

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

SANNA KANNISTO

Asio otus

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

The exhibition’s title, Gestures, reflects the artist’s interest in the relationships between birds and their means of communication. A Japanese study published last year revealed that birds communicate using symbolic gestures. The Japanese Tit (Parus minor) flutters its wings in a particular way to signal an invitation for its mate to enter the nest first, suggesting that birds understand abstract messages on a level previously unrecognized by humans. Another study has revealed that the male starling is able to anticipate its mate’s specific appetites and bring the female the exact treats she desires. Birds are scientifically proven to have highly developed social skills. Studies even suggest that birds might possess a ‘theory of mind’, as they appear to be capable of making a distinction between their own mental states and those of others.

SANNA KANNISTO

© Sanna Kannisto / Courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

Sanna Kannisto has been photographing birds in Finland and around the world for over a decade, offering her unique insights on the acceleration of environmental change. The past ten years have seen a drastic decline in bird populations all over the world, including Finland. The crested tit – the species portrayed in one of Kannisto’s diptychs – was formerly an endangered species, but is now on the critically endangered list. In her recent works, Sanna Kannisto has expanded her avian menagerie to challenging new species such as crows, owls, woodpeckers, hawks, bee-eaters and swallows. During her field work, she collaborates with ornithologists and bird ringers. She has received permission for her projects from the Finnish Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. The birds featured in Gestures were photographed in Finland and Italy.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com

Liisa Pesonen @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Same But Different" Exhibition

Liisa Pesonen

Same But Different

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

February 21 – March 23, 2025

Liisa Pesonen’s new paintings feature recurring motifs vaguely reminiscent of a vase. In terms of content, they can be interpreted as inheriting the legacy of still life painting. Despite their identifiable subject, most of Pesonen’s paintings are centered on structural elements, such as the dynamic relationship between lines, planes, forms and colors. That said, the artist never treats her paintings as pure studies of form, but rather as an inquiry into the meanings that emerge from interactions of compositional elements.

Pesonen’s paintings are variations of an ongoing dialogue played out between the subject and the background. What the artist initially conceives as a vase might be transformed into a rectangle or a linear configuration. Her paintings are characterized by their seemingly endless alternation between representation and abstraction, dialogues between static form and dynamic drawn lines, and interplays of spontaneous expression and meticulous control. At the heart of her practice, she often returns to the same question: Where exactly is the subject located in the painting? Is it the representational form of the vase, or is it hidden in the textures of the drawn lines? Even when the subject is a recognizable object, Liisa Pesonen never exclusively depicts the object for its own sake, but rather as an interpretation of something that can only be expressed through the language of painting or drawing. Sometimes her vases are like anthropomorphic figures that briefly leap off the background, only to disappear again the next moment.

Liisa Pesonen (b. 1962) is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, and her work is represented in many private and public collections, including those of the City of Helsinki, the State Art Deposit Collection, the City of Jyväskylä, Wihuri Foundation and Pori Art Museum. She has had many solo exhibitions and she has participated in group exhibitions at the Lönnström Art Museum, Pori Art Museum, and the Mänttä Art Festival.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Artist Kerttu Saali @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki - "Lightbeams and a Blizzard" Exhibition

Kerttu Saali 

Lightbeams and a Blizzard 

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

February 21 – March 23, 2025

KERTTU SAALI (b. 1994)  has adopted a darker palette and more intense style of expression in her latest paintings. Her characteristic curvilinear shapes and twisting lines stretch across the canvas, alternately converging and diverging to form abstract compositions, or “sites”, as the artist describes them. Her burgeoning shapes spill outside the canvas, taking on a three-dimensional, sculptural form as they merge with the picture frame, creating contrasts between the solidity of the wood and the ethereal, painterly elements. Saali’s paintings suggest nature’s cycles and growth processes, as if they were mimicking nature rather than just representing it. Their sensual quality invites the viewer to experience them holistically. The sense of sight awakens the other senses, invoking sounds, smells, and tactile experiences in the viewer’s imagination.

Chlorophyll-scented, saturated greens engage in dialogue with translucent blues and whites, telling two sides of the same story. Kerttu Saali chooses her colors intuitively, letting the composition unfold spontaneously as she strives to capture a particular feeling or mood that the colors awaken in her. She begins with mid-tones and steadily progresses in two directions, adding layers of darker and lighter tones, simultaneously adding brightness and moving deeper into shadow.

Even Saali’s white paintings are never entirely monochromatic; the viewer’s eye is drawn to subtle tonal variations that evoke wintry landscapes and northern nature, resonating with subconscious memories of Finnish art history. Kerttu Saali in fact describes the imprints on the canvas as “memory traces”. When she paints, she never analyzes what the traces mean: her creative expression emanates from a total sense of freedom, drawing inspiration from everything the artist has seen and experienced.

KERTTU SAALI graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2023. She has exhibited in numerous group shows in Finland and internationally, and her work is held in many private and public collections, including those of the Vantaa Art Museum, the HUS Art Collection, the City of Tampere and Saastamoinen Foundation. The artist lives and works in Helsinki.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Charles Sandison: The Garden of Death @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Charles Sandison

The Garden of Death

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki 

21 February – 23 March 2025

Charles Sandison taught himself to code during a time when computers were not yet part of daily life, and it became an organic aspect of his artistic thinking. His works are immersive, site-specific installations in which the viewer encounters ever-changing and evolving landscapes composed of digital and physical elements. These installations blend cultural memory, linguistic structures, and history in a continuous process that crosses temporal boundaries, where meanings are not predetermined. The past and the present, history and cultural heritage, meet the possibilities of the future. 

In the main gallery space, Charles Sandison creates an installation where these themes come to life, drawing parallels with motifs found throughout Western art history. The work is based on Hugo Simberg’s The Garden of Death, where archetypal themes—such as the skeleton representing death—are brought to the level of human experience: they live, suffer, love, and experience just as we mortals do. The garden is present not only as a theme but also in its concrete realization. The gallery, as a closed space, becomes a growth medium where, instead of organic life forms, digital entities grow. The computers placed in the space interact with each other, processing information—language, symbols, and behaviors—that, like DNA, passes on to the next generation. The work is not a pre-designed, repetitive video installation, but rather a code in which different parts communicate with one another, generating new content in real time. 

This contrast between eternal themes and human experience raises questions about the relationship between humans and technology in Sandison’s works, alongside the growing concerns about the power of artificial intelligence. Is technology shaping society in ways we do not yet fully understand, and are we humans the caretakers of the digital world, or the other way around? Have the oracles of old been replaced by probability calculations, and is collective memory now stored in digital archives? 

Born in Scotland, Charles  Sandison (b. 1969) graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1993, and his installations have been shown in public spaces around the world. His works are held in numerous Finnish and international collections, including the Kiasma Museum, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Denver Art Museum, and the Bonn Art Museum. The artist lives and works in Tampere. 

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki

www.galerieforsblom.com

Gerold Miller @ Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

Gerold Miller

Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki

January 17 – February 16, 2025

Now exhibiting in Finland for the first time, GEROLD MILLER is a German sculptor known for his minimalistic, geometric works exploring intersections of space, form, and perception. His practice revolves around space and time, stagnancy and movement, subject and object, with the viewer becoming merged an an integral part of the artwork. His art is distinctive for its precision, clean lines, and the use of industrial materials such as aluminium and lacquer. It blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, challenging traditional distinctions and thus inviting the viewer into a dialogue with the visual experience.

The sculptures and wall reliefs featured in the exhibition represent a reduced notion of pictoriality, a key role being played by their placement in time and space. Much depends on the viewer’s perspective in the space and how they position themselves in relation to the work. The merging of the sculpture and the viewer is an ever-evolving process: when encountering Miller’s works, the viewer can experience the world as being simultaneously mirrored and real, while themselves occupying both simulated and real space. In this way, Miller interweaves space and time, stagnancy and movement, subject and object, viewer and sculpture, as a holistically integrated artwork.

GEROLD MILLER (b. 1961) studied sculpture at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, graduating in 1989. His work has been exhibited and is held in museums and private collections around the world, including the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, NOMA New Orleans Museum of Art in the United States, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in Germany, Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Takasaki Museum of Art in Japan, Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Musée de l’Art et de la Histoire Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Italy.

GALERIE FORSBLOM

Yrjönkatu 22, 00120 Helsinki 

www.galerieforsblom.com

Leena Nio - Exhibition @ Helsinki Contemporary - "Dwellers"

Leena Nio: Dwellers

Helsinki Contemporary

10 January - 2 February 2025

Leena Nio

Crowded I, 2024

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Oil on canvas, 170 cm x 150 cm

© Leena Nio, courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

Leena Nio

Composition with a red dress shirt and yellow 

handmade sweater, 2023-2024

Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Oil on canvas, 170 cm x 150 cm

© Leena Nio, courtesy Helsinki Contemporary

Leena Nio’s practice is underpinned by the pleasure of painting and looking. As she paints, she surrenders herself to the magic of colour and an abundance of details and intertwined brushstrokes. She plays with tensions between concealment and exposure, the personal and the universal, and juxtapositions of contrasting textures.

Leena Nio’s latest exhibition consists of still life compositions capturing scenes of quotidian daily existence. Many are composed around a laundry basket, a mundane household item that is rarely celebrated in art, yet nevertheless an object in which there is beauty, softness and nuances to be discovered. A human presence is suggested indirectly through cropped fragments of garments and laundry.

Leena Nio’s complexly layered paintings straddle between abstraction and representation. Things hidden behind façades are central to her recent paintings, many of which literally contain peepholes evoking the duality of daily existence: behind the public façade is a private world that is revealed only to one’s closest loved ones. Fluffy jumpers and other items of clothing appear as recurring symbols of the softening buffers that we erect between ourselves and external reality.

Leena Nio’s layered paintings bring to light the interconnected nature of reality. As if braiding hair or knitting strands of woollen yarn, she visually juxtaposes and interweaves meticulously executed details, inviting viewers to reflect on the inextricable oneness of the objects, people, and other living beings in our lives.

Leena Nio’s paintings seem to ponder the way our lives unfold almost like a series of still life compositions. An object such as a laundry basket is a theatre stage upon which we perform our daily existence in an ever-changing procession of clothing, while we ourselves observe this theatre of life as onlookers in the sidelines.

HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY

Bulevardi 10, 00120 Helsinki

helsinkicontemporary.com