Past ex­hi­bi­tions

Past, present and possible futures converge in a darkly expressive exhibition by Palestinian-Danish artist Larissa Sansour at Amos Rex. Sansour’s video works and installations interweave contemporary political issues with imagined realities, using narrative methods of science fiction, documentary and opera. The artist’s evocative, carefully refined works expand into universal studies of grief, memory and inherited trauma.

Four shimmering green figures have laid down temporary roots in the Lasipalatsikortteli Square and on the terrace of Bio Rex. A haunting mystery surrounds these moss giants, some of the Finnish sculptor Kim Simonsson’s largest works to date. The giants form a fantastical band of travellers, inviting us to question, dream and imagine in the fearless way of children.

Art moves us, or not, in ways that we ourselves do not always quite understand, let alone knowing how to put them into words. I feel, for now is Amos Rex’s first exhibition of works from its own collections on this scale, and takes us through the art into emotions. The more than a hundred artworks chosen for the exhibition carry us from isolation to empathy, from ecstasy to nostalgia.

The wide-ranging exhibition I feel, for now, will show works from the collection made by more than 70 artists from the 1960s up to the present.

Spirit Systems of Soft Knowing ༊*·˚ by the artist collective Keiken, explored the idea of extending empathetic connection and communication towards other species and other forms of existence. This tactile, spatial installation drew on the body’s energy currents and on material animism, a philosophy rooted in the idea that all creatures and things possess a soul. The experiences and bodily sensations of museum visitors became a continuation of and complement to this immersive work.

Josefina Nelimarkka’s The Cloud of Un/knowing lifts our gaze to the heavens. It explores clouds and their essence as part of the Earth’s hydrological cycle. The exhibition consists of new works that change in an instant, materials that stimulate the senses, and atmospheric–data-driven technology. Local weather data and scientific measurements acquired from the Arctic regions in real time are transformed into light, sound, and digital water droplets forming a subtle unity.

Japanese composer and artist Ryoji Ikeda builds immersive audiovisual installations from sound, light, physical phenomena and mathematical considerations. Among the works, you could also see new works that are connected to the museum’s unique architecture. Amos Rex’s exhibition was Ikeda’s first solo exhibition in Finland.

Ryoji Ikeda’s exhibition was on view from 27 September 2023 to 25 February 2024.

From gathering confessions to everyday observations of a fragment collector, from knitted diaries to monster outfits – in this third edition of Generation triennial, the young artists’ relationship with creativity continues to be multidisciplinary and open-minded. The artists of Generation 2023 move fluidly across different art forms avoiding strictly defined genres.

In The Quiet Parade, Hans Op de Beeck’s hypnotic world took over Amos Rex from 21 Sept 2022 – 26 Feb 2023. The Belgian artist created a new immersive installation, which invited the viewer to ponder the ordinary moments and the essential questions of being.

Hans Op de Beeck is known for his large-scale spatial installations and figurative sculptures capturing moments frozen in time, but he moves in a variety of ways between different media. Today, his almost monochromatic body of work also includes paintings, animations, texts, drawings, photographs, videos, opera and theatre. The reflection of our complex society, as well as the universal questions of existence and mortality, are frequently recurring themes in his art.

There is much more beneath the earth’s surface besides earth, minerals and roots. There is also the glowing magma of volcanoes, underground aquifers, unexplored caves, rabbit holes, catacombs and metro tunnels. Amos Rex’s Subterranean was an extensive exhibition consisting of four themes that explored how artists through the centuries have depicted the worlds beneath our feet.

In the subterranean exhibition rooms of Amos Rex, Bill Viola’s artistic register was on full display: from large immersive projections of mythically flowing waters and fires, to smaller, intimate works that home in on emotions and states of being. Bill Viola: Inner Journey at Amos Rex was the artist’s first solo show in Finland.

Between us brought work by three artists to spaces beyond Amos Rex’s exhibition halls into areas that have not so far been used for exhibitions. The show features six installations; all of them have been created specifically for and to the exhibition’s spaces. The works of Karoliina Hellberg, Tero Kuitunen and Raimo Saarinen prompt us to ponder the concept of memory, our complex relationship to the environment, and the elusive nature of beauty. In the exhibition, viewers move from a billowing red world, through a babbling ecosystem to the brink of parallel realities.

Blick is a multisensory total work of art by visual artist Raija Malka and composer Kaija Saariaho. The exhibition takes us into the midst of a sound work by Saariaho and installations by Malka.

The audience is invited to participate in creating Blick by moving through it, observing it, becoming immersed in it or constructing their own arrangements. When arriving at the exhibition, the audience enters also the work of art. Blick features chairs and steps where visitors can sit and unhurriedly immerse themselves in the artwork’s world.

Egypt of Glory was shown in two parallel locations: at Amos Rex in Helsinki, and at the Art Museum of Estonia’s Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. The rare two-part exhibition is based on one of the most important collections of Ancient Egyptian art and culture outside Egypt – the collection of Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

Generation 2020 is a fascinating peek into the minds and art of an emerging generation of artists. Amos Rex’s exhibition Generation 2020 presented works by over 80 artists aged 15–23. The diversity of the artists is apparent in the exhibition that shows artworks selected through an open call from over 1 600 proposals. The 150+ artworks of the exhibition take us through subjects, such as sexual identity, climate change, technology and future, well-being, craftmanship and visual arts traditions as well as social and personal memory.

Amos Rex presented Birger Carlstedt (1907–1975) in an extensive exhibition that encompasses the artist’s entire career, all the way from his abstract experiments of the 1920s to the Concretist period beginning in the 1950s. The exhibition includes a reconstruction of the legendary café Le Chat Doré, “The Golden Cat”.

Ars Fennica 2019 exhibition presents the five candidates vying for Finland’s most notable visual art award: Petri Ala-Maunus (FI), Miriam Bäckström (SE), Ragnar Kjartansson (IS), Egill Sæbjörnsson (IS) and Aurora Reinhard (FI). Central themes of the exhibition jointly arranged by Amos Rex and Ars Fennica include the role of the artist, power relations, new pictorial realities and the Western tradition of landscape painting.

Amos Rex is thrilled to present the works of Amsterdam-based artist collective Studio Drift. Comprising film, sculpture and installations, the current exhibition explores the basic premise from which all living beings operate: single entities attaching themselves to larger contexts. Founded in 2007 by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, Studio Drift work across a range of media, navigating the boundaries of art and technology with great ease. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Drifter, a utopian vision of a concrete monolith floating silently towards an unknown destination.

The works of the Belgian painter René Magritte (1898-1967) are shown for the first time in Finland at Amos Rex. Magritte, who is considered a leading figure in Surrealism, is particularly known for his works that turn everyday reality upside down; an apple fills a whole room and a nose becomes a pipe. The familiar is suddenly bafflingly strange. The exhibition puts the artist himself centre stage: it is constructed around Magritte’s Life Line lecture, given in Antwerp in 1938.

For its inaugural exhibition Amos Rex presents Tokyo-based teamLab (est. 2001) – a 500-strong interdisciplinary art collective consisting of artists, programmers, CG animators, mathematicians, architects, graphic designers and writers, whose aim is to “reconfigure reality” through collective initiatives.