The mysteries of art and nature form the beating heart of this abundant summer of contemporary art in the historical setting of Laukko Manor. The main building is showing Osmo Rauhala’s iconic deer paintings. Kati Immonen’s fable-like watercolours glow on the first-floor gallery. The granary is showing amazing paintings by Raisa Raekallio and Misha del Val. And you can see the original, boisterous sculptural congregation in the Pagan Temple. Tapani Kokko’s latest output will be shown in the stable restaurant’s new collection exhibition.
Please note that our exhibition premises are not accessible to people with mobility issues.
Laukko Manor’s main building is showing iconic deer paintings by Osmo Rauhala (b. 1957). Having made a successful international career as an artist, Rauhala now returns to his best-known subject, inspired by the history of deer at Laukko.
The deer, familiar to him from the forests of his home farm, found its way into his art in New York in the late 1980s. The beautiful, easily relatable deer grew into a mythical metaphor for nature suffering at the hands of humankind. At the same time, the figure of the deer – common in cave paintings from prehistoric times – spoke of the age-old interplay between nature and art. The young artist was also fascinated by old Celtic beliefs that the deer is a sacred animal that carries messages between the earthbound and the beyond.
Rauhala’s artistic working process is inspired by an inexhaustible curiosity about the human capacity for observing and conceptualising reality. In the new paintings, the deer often exists in dialogue with human-made symbols. The deliberate two-dimensionality and reduced palette reflect Rauhala’s scientific worldview. For him, beauty is a form of order. The language concealed in the beauty of the animal figures allows us to learn to better understand nature and our own place in it.
Kati Immonen (b. 1971) is known as an innovator in both the content and technique of watercolour painting. In the exhibition’s titular work, hung in the salon, Immonen combines traditional painting with projected animation. The actual plants and sculptures in the painting were sketched in the autumn in Laukko Park, which is brought to life by the animation that changes with the season and time of day.
The new works in the Monument series on display in the gallery update the idea of a monument to being an artwork carried out in collaboration with nature. Instead of prominent men, these works are named after the plants that grow on their statues. The series culminates in Clustered Bellflower (the Finnish title, Peurankello, means Deer Bell), which glows in nocturnal darkness. The painting is based on the bust of Elias Lönnrot that was put up in Laukko Park during the golden age of monuments.
The play of meanings in Immonen’s art is delightfully diverse. There is always a touch of black humour. The large Statue Park in the lobby contains a headless monument, for which detached birch-plywood heads offer a riot of possibilities. The narrative quality is accentuated in the recently completed fairytale-like paintings, which transport the viewer close to the imaginative worlds of anime.
The exhibition by Raisa Raekallio (b. 1978) and Misha del Val (b. 1979) is an enigmatic journey into the wondrous realm of art, where everything is possible. At the same time, when they are painting on canvas, the artist duo take a quiet moment to listen both to each other and to the artwork’s own mysterious will. At the heart of the intuitive creative process is awakening and celebrating the mystery that dwells within the painting.
The artworks, created in the village of Sirkka in the municipality of Kittilä, get their unique charm from the immense nature and exuberant community spirit of the North. For Misha, who is from the Spanish Basque Country, the seasons are an endless source of inspiration. The miracle of winter is emphasised by showing the snowy landscapes in this summertime manor setting.
The paintings on display in the granary have been made over the past three years, including some made specifically for Laukko. The exhibition has been mounted in collaboration with Makasiini Contemporary.
The journey took place today. From the overused melody, from the haystack of the familiar word, the worn-out miracle set out. It dragged its hooves through fields, and paths of ancient pebbles.
Today, the worn-out miracle passed through an opening in the masonry wall and arrived at this cool, semi-dark chamber filled with the heavy air of expectation that you now breathe. As it laid its pupils onto these lines, in a rowdy heart, with no walls inside, silently, smiling like an idiot, the miracle recovered the command of its own splendour.
Then and there, in a kind of a knee-jerk reaction, the miracle transformed into a snake. Turning around from these sentences, the snake began its ascent, step by step, with foamy feet, accompanied by a timeless echo, hand on the cold steel, step by step, up towards the light. The threatening concrete sky would soon be at its feet.
When it reached the upper world, the snake shed its superfluous skin, and transformed into a gaze. The eye traversed over milky lands, polar nights, and skies incandescent, held by columns of mortar and sand. It encountered breathing nature that defied its own definition. It conversed with flying lovers tangled in the foliage of a willow, a coffeepot lost in the woods, tree spirits, snow-eaters, a curious owl, tender creatures made of goo, a shy mythical moose.
The fibers of the gaze filled up with a new substance. And then, empty-handed, it descended its mountain, against the grain, down the axis mundi, step by step. Its eyes watered as it became intoxicated again with the light of the world. The miracle knew there was no need to take anything with it from this journey, for in a flashing moment of a gift under the impetus of wise trees, the miracle realised that it was not even a miracle, just its splendor.
R+M
Tapani Kokko’s (b. 1969) extravagant wooden sculptures have returned to the Pagan Temple. This shrine of art, which appeals to all the senses, was built on the Viking-age cemetery in Laukko Park in 2018.
The carnivalesque wooden sculptures are mementos from Kokko’s three-decade career as an artist. The power of these works to enthral springs from their coarse sculpturality, profound humanity, and astonishing imagination.
Kokko deploys a cornucopia of materials and techniques with a highly personal aesthetic and technical virtuosity. Tapani Kokko’s latest works, inspired by rococo style, will be on display in the collection exhibition in the stable restaurant.
Laukko Manor’s stable restaurant is for the first time showing the Manor’s own collection. For the Paradise exhibition new works have been commissioned from Viljami Heinonen, Tapani Kokko and Tamara Piilola. The historic stable building is also showing photographic works by Sandra Kantanen, Ola Kolehmainen and Marja Pirilä, as well as paintings by Marita Liulia.
Paradise can be seen during the Laukko restaurant’s opening hours. The stable restaurant is in the forecourt at Laukko Manor, outside the museum area, and so does not require an entrance fee.
25 June–3 August (Wed–Sun 11 am–5 pm)
4 August–17 August (Thu–Sun 11 am–5 pm)
Museum ticket €15,00
Please note that our exhibition premises are not accessible to people with mobility issues.
The restaurant and the park are accessible.
40 km south of Tampere
Less than a two-hour drive from Helsinki, Turku and Pori