Kari Vehosalo’s extensive retrospective exhibition at Sara Hildén Art Museum opened last weekend and is on view until 23 May 2021. The exhibition occupies the whole museum, offering a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre so far.

Kari Vehosalo’s art is rooted in reality and based on a critical examination of it. The imagery of the history of art, the concepts of philosophy and psychology and the facts and fictions of Hollywood all constitute starting points for Vehosalo’s works. At the heart of it are light and darkness and the beauty and terror of being.

In Vehosalo’s paintings, technical skill is combined with an imagery of cool beauty, in which a monochromatic palate lends a distancing effect to images of reality depicted with photographic exactitude. In his pictures he tends to place some disturbing element that shatters our sense of familiarity and security – and thereby summons up questions. For him art means above all deliberation.

A richly illustrated book containing articles by the philosophers Sanna Tirkkonen and Juha Varto is published in conjunction with the exhibition, and is also available at Galerie Anhava.

YLE interviewed Vehosalo right before the opening of the exhibition. Watch the video here (the interview is in Finnish).

Photo: Sakari Piippo