Galerie Anhava

The landmark collecting project, supported by a charitable organisation AKO Foundation, resulted in the acquisition by the British Museum of almost 400 works by artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – including works by Dolven, Hellberg, Merenmies and Tuori, as well as graphic prints by Jorma Hautala and Matti Kujasalo. The British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings holds one of the world’s greatest collections of works on paper, consisting of about 50,000 drawings and more than two million prints.

Nordic noir delves into the Nordic melancholy, myths, inner struggles, post-war angst, feminism and the rights of the Indigenous Sámi people. The dominant theme is nature and the vital urgency to preserve the environment unique to the region. To coincide with the exhibition, an illustrated catalogue written by Jennifer Ramkalawon, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Nordic Graphic Art department, will be published by the British Museum Press.

Image: Anna Tuori, Done, 2023, soft pastel and oil pastel on paper, 65x50cm. Photo: Jussi Tiainen

Image: Elina Merenmies, Dead Irwin, 2000, ink on paper, 31 x 24 cm

A deeply insightful artist with a distinct voice, Roos creates art that is a broad and sustained investigation of the essence of painting and its spatial dimension – a surface that acts as a boundary between two spaces or realities. Roos is fascinated by how paintings affect us bodily rather than through the information provided by the image.

Nina Roos (b. 1956) is an internationally renowned painter and one of the leading Nordic artists of her generation. She is a graduate of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, where she also served as professor of painting from 2001–2004. Roos is the recipient of the Pro Finlandia and Prince Eugen medals. She received the Carnegie Art Award in 2004, and she represented Finland at the Venice Biennale in 1995. Roos has had extensive solo shows at Lund Konsthall (2019), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (2009), Malmö Konsthall in (2003) and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2001). Roos’s works are in a number of important collections in the Nordic countries, such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Malmö Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. Her latest solo exhibition at Galerie Anhava was seen in 2023.

Eye in Eye, an exhibition showcasing works by Nina Roos and Martti Aiha is currently on view at Kristiansand Kunsthall in Norway. The artists share an interest in sensory experience, and spatial dimensions. The formal elements allow Roos’s paintings and drawings to serve as philosophical tools for discovering, revealing, and reflecting on the existence of the painting and the position of the viewer. There is drama in Roos’s works, where what is hidden reveals something else. The exhibition runs until 1 June 2025.

Photo: Mikko Zenger

Magical is KUMMA’s interpretation of magical realism, where wonder and marvel, the play of proportions, fairy tales, and mysticism meet parallel realities. Nature serves as the connecting thread for the artists – The landscapes change from fairytale-like atmospheres to dark worlds emerging from the depths of the forest.

The exhibition is on view between 16 May–31 August 2025.
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Image: Joel Slotte, Villikaalitarhuri, 2021, oil on canvas, 73 x 61 cm

In video installations and film projections, paintings and sculpture, as well as photography, sound and text, Dolven addresses the universal through the intimate. By exploring the sphere between the familiar and the unfamiliar, her work invites new perspectives on the world that surrounds us. With references to several historical role models Dolven’s work bridges the past and the present. The exhibition’s titular work, amazon, offers a contemporary reading of the famous female warriors of Greek myth through close-up images of a female archer, an example of Dolven’s ongoing engagement with questions of gender, strength and resilience.

A K Dolven. amazon runs until 31 August 2025.

Image: A K Dolven, amazon, 2005, 16 mm film without sound. Courtesy of the National Museum, Oslo

The Free Art School was founded in 1935 on the initiative of Maire Gullichsen to offer an alternative to academic art education. Modelled after the “free academies” of Paris, the Free Art School was a champion of modern painting in Finland from its very beginning. The history of the Free Art School and the artists who studied and taught there are approached through Leonard and Katarina Bäcksbacka’s collection, donated to the HAM and the City of Helsinki’s art collection.

The exhibition runs until 4 January 2026.

Image: Tor Arne, Painting (from the series Reconvalescentia), 1993. Photo: HAM/Hanna Kukorelli

Breaking the Joints is a group exhibition and event programme that considers the status of the body within the history of animation, elaborating on the essential concepts of cartoons, while also examining what these modes of world-building can tell us about our world today. In their works, the exhibited artists draw from and critically deploy animated tropes and techniques to address bodily anxieties and material relationships, media and trauma. The exhibition considers a tension at the heart of animation: between animation as a narrative of liberation, metamorphosis, and transformation, and animation as a cyclical mechanised disciplining of the body full of violence and bittersweet gags.

Photo: Jani Ruscica

Morbus (Latin: disease, illness) explores the theme of illness and getting sick. How do we relate to the body and illness in our performance-oriented and health-obsessed culture, where fear illness and the decay of the body? We believe we can control our bodies, and we strive for unrealistic physical perfection. The body and our health have become a life-filling project where there is no room for reflection on vulnerability and mortality. The fragility and inadequacy that are components of being sick remind us of our mortality and foster compassion for one another. The works presented in the exhibition ponder whether we can also find beauty inside our body, even in its illness.

Image: Mari Sunna, Pray, 2012, oil on canvas, 35 x 30 cm

Tervetuloa | Välkommen | Welcome!

Photo: Kristiina Männikkö

The exhibition asks what will happen if there is no ice in the future? How will the great generation gap emerge as the everyday and sensual world is transformed by climate change? These are questions that deeply affect our identity in the north. Antti Laitinen and Hanna Saarikoski made their first joint work in 2024 for the Art II Biennial. The exhibition at Rauma Art Museum continues the collaboration of the Somero-based artist couple with new artworks. The exhibition mainly consists of independent works by both artists.

Sula || Molten runs until 18 May 2025.

Image: Antti Laitinen and Hanna Saarikoski, Jäännos, 2025, video

On Sunday 23 February, at 13–15, Santeri Tuori will be present at the gallery to discuss and answer questions about his artistic practice. At 13.30 the artist will give a tour to his exhibition Immediate Nature, on view until 2 March.

Tervetuloa | Välkommen | Welcome!

Photo: Timo Setälä

In Kuokkanen’s paintings, the thoughts and feelings that swirl around in our subconscious take physical form. Everything is connected in a dreamlike way, the boundaries between species are blurred, the inanimate comes to life, and living beings split into pieces. At times, a sadness emerges beneath the apparently carefree surface. The artist describes her method of working as circular motion, in which images, painting, and naming the piece blend together to form something new. The exhibition is curated by Kiasma’s curator Max Hannus.

Works by Kuokkanen were previously seen at Kiasma as part of the international ARS22 show of contemporary art, as one of the few Finnish artists.

Image:Essi Kuokkanen, I Like the Way It Stings, 2018
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen are known for their kinetic installations and sculptures that combine space, light and sound. The duo’s professional backgrounds are in architecture and music. The works are often site- or situation-specific in nature and based on everyday observations. They are connected to physical phenomena, including electric currents, radiation, gravity, magnetism and the properties of matter and sound. They are experiments, a form given by the artists, focusing on the essentials. Although the works are industrial, minimalist and even cold, they require a sentient observer.

Image: Grönlund – Nisunen, Frozen globe, 2023, 20 x 20 x 20 cm, round stainless-steel container, frozen gel, white painted pedestal and freezer.
Photo: Santino Lamorte

Hehkutus-klubi is an event for all lovers of illustrated books. The event is hosted by Kati Rapia, a visual artist, cartoonist, scriptwriter, photographer and illustrator. First Rapia will hype her guest, after which Tuori will present some of his favourite illustrated books to the audience.

The event is free and open to everyone.
The discussion is in Finnish.
Welcome!

Eeva-Leena Eklund’s art draws its subject matter from everyday events and observations, as well as from personal collections built up over many years. Eklund seeks, selects and organises small, mundane items and objects discarded as kitsch. These are themes that she returns to again and again in her paintings. Her enthusiasm, affection and caring remain untainted by cynicism or calculation and feel fresh, even defiant in this day and age. Eklund’s signature salon-style hanging, consisting of paintings, photographs and objects, is like an unruly yet purposeful string of associations, or like a layered candy cane: you don’t tear into it hungrily with your teeth but instead, take your time to savour it.

Eeva-Leena Eklund (b. 1972, Pori) lives and works in Helsinki. Eklund has exhibited her work in many solo and group exhibitions, including Monitoimitila_O, SIC Gallery, Galleria Sculptor, and the Helsinki, Oulu and Turku Art Museums. Her first solo exhbition at Galerie Anhava took place in 2023. She has work in several major collections, including those of the HAM Helsinki Art Museum, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and the Finnish State Art Collection. In 2020, Eklund was the first Finnish artist to be invited to create an extensive solo show in the InCollection series by EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and Saastamoinen Foundation.

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Photo: Courtesy of the artist

“Humans, always oriented toward the future, inevitably confront the reality of their finitude. This tension between infinite aspiration and the limits of life often creates a sense of impatience. For the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the key lies in fully accepting our ephemeral nature, in “being-there” (Dasein) — either by living authentically, embracing our impermanence, or inauthentically, by fleeing from this reality.

For Vehosalo, ‘Being There’ means perceiving reality and truth differently, shaped by our desires, culture, and unconscious mind. In front of vast landscapes and interior scenes marked by gaping black holes, his almost photographic paintings immerse our gaze in mystery, uncertainty, and fragility.”

Image: Kari Vehosalo, The Past is a Gaping Hole III, 2023, oil on copper, 18 x 15 cm. Photo: Erno Enkenberg

The selected works highlight the colour palettes typical of different eras, colour theories, material research, as well as the cultural, symbolic and emotional dimensions of colours. The exhibition brings together paintings, graphic art, photography, moving image and sculpture, all of which illuminate the essence of colour in their own ways.

Alongside the museum’s own acquisitions, works from the collections of Nils Dahlström, the Friends of Turku Art Museum and Lars Göran Johnsson are included, as well as an acquisition from the latest subcollection, Collection Lieto Savings Bank Foundation.

Image: Jussi Niva, I Spy With My Eyes Something Being As Indigo, 1994. Photo: Jussi Tiainen

The exhibition runs until 2.2.2025.

Image: Courtesy of WAM Turku City Art Museum

In the restless fantasies of Joel Slotte’s paintings, we see complex underdogs, bruised thinkers and weary revellers. The features in the (self)portraits are rugged, the gazes inaccessible, yet relatable. Moving effortlessly from lush gardens and shabby bike sheds, to the murkiness of art history, or the gates of a cemetery, Slotte’s rich symbolic scenes are dense with meaning – the medieval armors, plant mythology, squirming tattoos and jagged death metal logos serve as markers to the characters’ mindscapes. Moving from large canvases to smaller, coloured pencil drawings, Slotte’s palette becomes even more acidic, details more staggering, and the figures more fantastical.

Joel Slotte (b. 1987, Kokkola) lives and works in Helsinki. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2016. In 2021, Slotte was elected the Young Artist of the Year. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, most recently at HAM Helsinki Art Museum (2024); Turku Art Museum (2024), Finlandsinstitutets galleri, Stockholm (2023); and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2022). In addition to private collections in Finland, Sweden and Denmark, Slotte’s works have been acquired by major public collections, including the art museums of Helsinki, Tampere, Turku and Kuopio, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and the Pro Artibus Foundation.

Slotte’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Anhava took place in August 2024.
Learn more about the artist and find Slotte’s available works via our Artist page.

For his work Forest Square III (2013) Laitinen removed a 10 x 10 meter piece of forest and sorted it into it’s different materials: soil, moss, wood, pines, etc. He then rebuilt this piece of forest and arranged the different materials by colour.

The exhibition runs until 12 January 2025.

Image: Antti Laitinen, Forest Square III, 2013, C-print