Helsinki School

Exhibitions

The Art of Renewal

Ilkka Halso | Nanna Hänninen | Sandra Kantanen

Opening: Friday, 27 June 6 - 8 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 have 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.

Grey Crawford | Transfigurations (1973-75)

Opening: Friday, 21 February 6 - 8 pm

Exhibition: 22 February - 19 April 2025

Venue: Persons Projects, Lindenstr. 35, 10969 Berlin

Persons Projects is proud to present, as part of the European Month of Photography in Berlin (EMOP), Grey Crawford’s third solo exhibition. His self-performances from the early 1970s encapsulate the spirit of an era in Southern California, in which Performance Art moved away from the platform of the audience and into the photographic framing of the moment. During this time, performance art can be best described as any type of self-absorbed activity that questioned the essence of sculpture by eliminating the object itself. The focus was on the body and its movement, and how these activities created conversations rather than answers. It was a period of experimentation, and Los Angeles - along with its extended suburbs - was the perfect place for these happenings to evolve. Local artists such as John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Chris Burden, and Judy Chicago were all crossing artistic boundaries, and opening up new opportunities that challenged the existing parameters of what the establishment considered to be art. Anywhere and everything became potential stages for artistic intervention. It was in this cultural setting that Grey Crawford’s performances began to evolve. His experiments incorporated locations ranging from the Mojave Desert to the infamous ceramic slip installations of Douglas Humble in his own home.

Grey Crawford | Transfigurations (1973-75)