Helsinki School

Exhibitions

Constellations of Thoughts

Niko Luoma | Jyrki Parantainen | Mikko Sinervo | Niina Vatanen

Opening: Saturday, 7 February, 3 - 6 pm

Exhibition: 7 Feb – 14 March 2026

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is pleased to present Constellations of Thoughts, a group exhibition featuring four Helsinki School artists: Niina Vatanen, Jyrki Parantainen, Niko Luoma, and Mikko Sinervo, who explore the visual language of the cosmos. Using photography as a conceptual and exploratory medium, their works offer new ways to imagine and perceive the universe. Each artist transforms cosmic principles, temporal rhythms, and metaphysical questions into images that act as a visual map of thought. Exhibited together, these works reveal how we perceive, imagine, and construct personal universes, from shifting structures of time and light to speculative architectures of distant stars. The exhibition presents the cosmos through a synthesis of science, philosophy, and poetic vision.

Jyrki Parantainen | Secular Limbo

Exhibition: 06 September - 25 October 2025

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is proud to present Jyrki Parantainen’s solo exhibition, Secular Limbo, a poetic reflection on the alchemy between emotions and memory. Additionally, for Berlin Art Week, we will present a selection of lightboxes from his famous Fire series at Hallen 06 in the Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin.

Jyrki Parantainen is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the Helsinki School. As the leading professor of the photography department at Aalto University of Art, Design, and Architecture for over ten years, he played a crucial role in developing this unique educational platform into one of the most recognizable and influential departments worldwide. Parantainen’s current exhibition at Persons Projects introduces his most recent works from the Poetry of Circulation series, complemented by his sculptures and objects from the Between Heaven and Earth series. This collection of works carries on his fascination with developing conceptual approaches and working methods by combining and weaving various philosophical and historical themes into his art pieces.

The Art of Renewal

Ilkka Halso | Nanna Hänninen | Sandra Kantanen

Opening: Saturday, 28 June 2 - 6 pm

Exhibition: 28 June - 30 August 2025

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is pleased to announce its summer exhibition, The Art of Renewal, bringing together works by the three Helsinki School artists Nanna Hänninen, Ilkka Halso, and Sandra Kantanen—whose conceptual approach to their photographic based practices has engaged deeply with ecological concerns over the past two decades. Through their unique interventions, each artist seeks to symbolically restore nature to what has been lost due to climate change, human neglect and urban encroachment. By altering images of real landscapes, they draw attention to pressing environmental issues, both present and future, blurring the line between the real and the imaginary. Their works use paradoxical situations to emphasize the reality of ecological degradation – barren landscapes infused with color, nature artificially preserved within protective structures, and untamed urban meadows transformed into surreal landscapes.