Studio view, 2021
VESA-PEKKA RANNIKKO is a versatile artist working with painting, sculpture, video and installation. He is fascinated by the fragmented nature of narrative structure, various types of mediums, and the simultaneity of different kinds of texts. Where as his abstract works seek to refer only to themselves and the process of making them, the figurative works, or “lying sculptures”, raise questions about the work’s relationship to reality, its topic, and the linguistic nature of vision. The video works and animations are characterized by associativity: combinations of the artificial structures of society, authentic experience and imagery related to nature. Sketch-like drawing and writing become combined in the stop motion images, where they form an organic, reactive, and associative whole.
Vesa-Pekka Rannikko’s (b. 1968, Turku) lives and works in Helsinki. His art has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions and video art festivals internationally, including at Kling & Bang Gallery, Reykjavik; Nordic de Lights, London; Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere; Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, U.S.A.; Galeri Lars Olsen, Copenhagen; and Alvar Aalto museum, Jyväskylä. Rannikko represented Finland in the Venice Biennale in 2011. His works are included in numerous collections, such as the collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Helsinki City Art Museum, and the Saastamoinen Foundation. Rannikko has made many commissioned, large-scale public works, most recently in Vantaa, Tuusula and Seinäjoki. In 2015 he won the State of Finland Prize for Fine Arts.
Pollination (Firecrown and Cabbage tree), 2021
dyed plaster
100 x 55 x 41 cm
In private collection
Lions Eat Grass
14 May – 13 June 2021
exhibition view
Fool's Paradise, 2021
animated drawing, single channel, vertical 4 K / HD projection on wall, sound
3 min, 42 s
Skin (P.A.N.D.A Team Leader), 2020
dyed plaster
64 x 27 x 23 cm
Lions Eat Grass
14 May – 13 June 2021
exhibition view
Wusta, 2017–2018
pigmented plaster
52 x 29 x 25 cm
In Sara Hildén Art Museum Collection
Auash, 2017-19
pigmented plaster
57 x 25 x 23 cm
In private collection
Everything Else
4–27 May 2018
exhibition view
Everything Else, 2018
animated drawing
Paauat, 2017
pigmented plaster
42 x 32 x 23 cm
In Niemistö Foundation Collection
Canary, 2013
installation view
Huuso, 2017
pigmented plaster
38 x 23 x 18 cm
In private collection
