In a world of constant visibility, this exhibition champions mystery.
In a world of constant visibility, this exhibition champions mystery. Ten artistic practices from Finland navigate the realms of dreams, memory, and imagination, opening up spaces of the hidden—places where not everything has to be visible or explained. They invite viewers to experience the ambiguous and the inaccessible as a reservoir of inner freedom.
With works by Edwina Goldstone, Johannes Kangas, Satu Kiuro, Salla Laurinolli, Samuli Laurinolli, Pilvi Ojala, Kukka Pitkänen, Minttu Saarinen, Katri Stenberg and Anssi Taulu.
Curated by Olivia Franke in collaboration with Ars-Häme ry, Hämeenlinna.
Speakers at the opening include Olivia Franke—Artistic Director, Mikko Fritze—Director of the Finland Institute, and Satu Kiuro—Board Member of Ars-Häme ry. Many of the participating artists from Finland will be in attendance.
The exhibition is the result of a long-standing collaboration between Künstlerhaus Lukas and its Finnish partner. It brings together ten contemporary artists from Finland—many of whom are former Lukas Artist-in-Residence fellows—and highlights the network of artistic exchange in the Baltic Sea region that has grown over the years.
The exhibition title is borrowed from the eponymous work by the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle. She describes the secret as a place of inner freedom—as a sanctuary that eludes the compulsion of complete visibility. In an age in which transparency and constant self-revelation are increasingly becoming the norm, the exhibition explores the value of the hidden, the inexplicable, and the inaccessible.
The works navigate the realms of nature and myth, memory and dream, ritual, the body, and the imagination. They preserve secrets just as they give rise to new ones. Sometimes this occurs through materials, gestures, or symbolic forms; other times through voids, allusions, and atmospheric spaces. Together, the ten works open a polyphonic dialogue about the invisible—and about the power of art to elude a world that can be fully explained.
