Jyrki Parantainen

In the Sky Unlike a Bird

Janne Lehtinen | Dominik Lejman | Jyrki Parantainen | Mikko Rikala | Santeri Tuori

Exhibition: 14 September – 19 November 2022

Opening: Friday, 16 September 2022, 6 – 9 pm

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 34, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is proud to present a group exhibition In the Sky Unlike a Bird which is a collection of five artists’ interpretations of how an individual weighs and ponders upon the different volumes of nothingness. It’s an exhibition that creates a space where words float in the air and islands hang by a thread pinned to an infinity of blue on blue. Imagine an image of gravity dangling by its arms or a man in the moon who teases the tides by splashing the ocean one wave at a time. Howard Altmann says it best in his poem used in collaboration with Dominik Lejman’s painting, "could it be the sky has changed its colors? The natural order is where I turn now to turn myself around”. It’s not about what we see but more so how we perceive the place we are in.

The Helsinki School – The Nature of Being

Exhibition: 27 June – 5 September 2020

Participating Artists: Elina Brotherus, Ulla Jokisalo, Janne Lehtinen, Ville Lenkkeri, Anni Leppälä, Sanna Kannisto, Sandra Kantanen, Eeva Karhu, Riitta Päiväläinen, Jyrki Parantainen, Jorma Puranen, Jari Silomäki, Santeri Tuori

Venue: Lindenstr. 34 – 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects | Helsinki School is proud to present our group exhibition The Helsinki School – The Nature of Being. This show will take place in both of our spaces Lindenstr. 34 and 35, and will be accompanied with our latest publication from the Helsinki School series volume 6 by Hatje Cantz.

This exhibition focuses on how these selected artists from the Helsinki School use their internal compass to intrinsically measure and guide their perspective in interpreting the landscape they live in. Historically, Nordic culture abides by the power generated by the changing of the four seasons. Each of these natural time periods either by its wrath or grace, notches its mark upon its passing, leaving a reminder in its wake of how fragile our human presence is within it.

Jyrki Parantainen | Poetic Realities

Exhibition: 14 March – 25 June, 2020

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects proudly presents a collection of Jyrki Parantainen’s photographs that focus on his fascination with poetic realities. The selected works reflect Parantainen’s interest in how we define our internal viewpoints in order to understand our emotional horizons. Parantainen states "it’s much more than just a sum of shapes, colours, and light. It’s the universe with all its manifestations: grief, longing, dreams, beauty, world politics, environmental disasters, and violence. It’s about the past, the present and the future. The landscape is a canvas permanently open to interpretation”. These works form a collection of perspectives, where words intermingle with each other or rest alone upon the image, ushering in new meanings in how we identify, observe or experience a landscape within his conceptual context.

Parantainen uses his life’s journey as a mirror for finding the subjects of his interest. These visual metaphors can evolve out of his own personal relationships or historical ones he uncovers, forming a personal library of dreams and disappointments. The photographs he creates go beyond the horizon of where the land, water and sky meet, rather they draw their breath from the space behind the mind’s eye. He says, "the horizon is not just a visual convergence of the three elements, but a mental interface, the beginning of a continuously expanding room of dreams and promises”.

Marked Sites – Jaakko Kahilaniemi, Jyrki Parantainen, Anna Reivilä

Opening: 20 January 2017, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition: 21 January – 19 April 2017

Gallery Taik Persons is highly pleased to present Marked Sites, our first exhibition in 2017, featuring works by Jaakko Kahilaniemi, Jyrki Parantainen, and Anna Reivilä.

The exhibition and its title refer to Rosalind E. Krauss’ essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1979), in which she presents the theory of the ‘expanded field’ to explain the development of the definition of sculpture in contemporary art. In her theory, she refers to so-called "marked sites” as a "combination of landscape and non-landscape.”

Marked Sites – Jaakko Kahilaniemi, Jyrki Parantainen, Anna Reivilä

Jyrki Parantainen - Maa

Opening: Friday January 16, 2015, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition: January 17 - March 7, 2015

Gallery TAIK Persons is highly pleased to present Helsinki School artist Jyrki Parantainen with a selection of works from his early series Earth (1989–1991).

Parantainen, who played a key role as to the Helsinki School during its founding years, continues to be one of the School’s driving forces. Always seeking to further his conceptual approaches and working methods in the production of artworks, Parantainen’s creative process has undergone significant transformations throughout his now over twenty-year long career. While older works were dedicated to photography and installation in characteristically large-scale formats, more recent works as shown in the exhibition Between Heaven and Earth (2012) departed entirely from the former medium and testified a new tendency towards small-scale objects.

A continuous red line in Parantainen’s oeuvre is the importance of conceptualization and preparation in producing a new work, both mentally and materially. Critical introspection and methodical accuracy are crucial aspects to this process, which Parantainen likens to writing a script for a film. The implementation of the work reveals itself as a stage on which personal emotional endeavor, precise technique, and perfect timing engage in a forceful intimate dialogue, palpably described by Parantainen as a form of "wrestling”.

Helsinki By Night

Exhibition: 5 April, 2008 - 11 May, 2008

Address: Bergstr. 22, 10115 Berlin-Mitte

Gallery TAIK is delighted to present artists from The Helsinki School with the group exhibition Helsinki By Night, presenting their latest works.

Helsinki by Night – Berlin a project by the University of Art and Design Helsinki will open three exhibitions – in collaboration with the Museum for Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki and the Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst, which every two years has approximately 50.000 visitors at the opening weekend (held in Berlin-Mitte). The exhibitons will feature Pasi Autio, Hannu Karjalainen, Juha Nenonen, and Santeri Tuori at brandatmosphere, Ola Kolehmainen at Galerie koal and Jyrki Parantainen at KFA Gallery. Along with those coordinated openings Gallery TaiK will open an exhibition featuring Tom Hunter (Helsinki School professional workshop series). Alongside there will be shown four video artists from the Helsinki School and selected videos from the Kiasma collection. Furthermore there will be a private showing of Timo Kelaranta, Ulla Jokisalo and Pentti Sammallahti.