Kari Juutilainen, Näkymä, 2022, acrylic on canvas. Photo: Kari Juutilainen, © Kuvasto.
Discover – Kari Juutilainen
10 February – 26 May 2024
Kuopio-based Kari Juutilainen’s acrylic paintings from the last five years. The exhibition highlights the importance of the painting process in the creation of an artwork.
”Making art begins when an idea starts to take shape, grow and develop into an artwork. When portraying an invisible world which is hard to describe, visual thinking offers access to an area that words may not reach.” The Discover exhibition features mainly Juutilainen’s new work which is characterised by organic and geometric layered structures and the interplay of chaos and order.
Kari Juutilainen, originally from Pieksämäki, is a prolific and versatile visual artist who has held over 30 solo and more than 100 group exhibitions during his 40-year career. His work includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, music, videos, performances as well as spatial audio productions. Juutilainen is a member of the Finnish Painters’ Union, the Kuopio Artists’ Association, Dimensio ry and the Finnish Critics’ Association.
Heikki Willamo, Näätä, 2022, digital inkjet print. Photo: © Heikki Willamo
Heikki Willamo – In the Arms of the Forest
8 June – 22 September 2024
The photographic artist, nature photographer and writer Heikki Willamo’s work focuses on nature, especially forests and its animals. In Willamo’s photographs, nature reveals itself as diverse and ancient, even mythical. Willamo has held numerous exhibitions in Finland and abroad and published many books.
Heikki Willamo has photographed forests for more than three decades. In that time, many old forests have been lost forever. The importance of nature images in evoking the relationship between nature and humans is more relevant now than ever. Willamo is looking for new forms of sustainable coexistence through photographic art. Nature photography often carries the burden of documentary photography, but in Willamo’s expression, the almost dreamlike and stylised presentation of forests and its inhabitants conveys lived experience. His artworks show what we will lose if we do not take action.
The exhibition at Mikkeli Art Museum will feature the artist’s new and older works as well as artworks based on moving image. The exhibition is curated by photo graphic artists Marko Hämäläinen and Harri Heinonen.
Hanging image from the Tumpkin’s Time exhibition at Päivälehti Museum, 2022. Photo: © Ida Pimenoff.
Tumpkin’s Time
12 October 2024 – 2 March 2025
2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kirsi Kunnas (1924–2021), a beloved poet, children’s author, translator and Academician. Artist Alexander Reichstein has created the three-dimensional exhibition Tumpkin’s Time based on Kunnas’ nursery rhymes, bringing the captivating characters to Mikkeli Art Museum. In the exhibition, the main characters of her poems take visitors on an adventure under the canopy of the Wonder Tree full of surprises and hidden details from the poems. The original illustrations deepen the exhibition experience and allow visitors of different generations to identify the era they recognise.
When it was first published in 1956, Tiitiäisen satupuu (Tumpkin’s wonder tree) book of nursery rhymes reformed Finnish children’s poetry and rhymes. Poems which focus on the world of children inspired the poet to continue working on the subject until 2020, when she published a collection of poems entitled Tiitiäisen metsä (Tumpkin’s forest). The poems brimming with humour, playfulness and verbal revelry are accompanied by the insightful illustrations of some of the best Finnish illustrators of their time – Maija Karma, Julia Vuori, Kristiina Louhi, Christel Rönns, Pia Westerholm and Silja-Maria Wihersaari.
The Tumpkin’s Time exhibition was originally produced by Päivälehti Museum (now known as Merkki, the Media Museum and Archives). The exhibition has also been displayed in the Moomin Museum, and the collection of illustrations presented there was curated by producer Minna Honkasalo.