Janne Räisänen
Kaikenkarvaiset ystäväni

03. - 26.09.2021

In Janne Räisänen’s solo exhibition All Creatures Great and Small small tales about friendship and about being human – or a living entity – are interwoven with Räisänen’s characteristic warm, grotesque humour. He depicts the wonders and absurdities of being human with an irresistible honesty, sometimes a little acerbically, but always with great affection.

The exhibition shows works on both paper and canvas, and as part of all this in the gallery space we can also delve into books – sketchpads – containing aquarelles. The new set of works has come about as a process, in a dialogue between watercolour and oil painting. For Räisänen one is as important as the other, and the presence of this process in the gallery brings the works and the artist close to the viewer. These new artworks by Räisänen, who has for a long time lived and worked in Berlin, came about in Helsinki. The bright colours have returned to the paintings, and the paint is thick in places. The new works are strong, distinct wholes, which gives depth to the motion in diverse directions and creates a new kind of layering.

The exhibition contains multiple versions of the same themes. The story of a work arises during the painting process, in the way that the picture advances as a gesture. Continual motion is central to Räisänen’s working process and the idea of a finished work is alien to it. Unfinishedness is also tied to the openness evident in his works. Openness to interpretations and to continual change.

Äiti kutoo minulle märkää villasukkaa (Mother is knitting me a wet woollen sock), Aatami ja muurahaiset (Adam and the Ants), Öljymäen sikakoira Mad SS Mikkelsen (The Pigdog of the Oil Hill Mad SS Mikkelsen)… Naming is an important part of the works, the titles come up in the moment and by surprise. They may derive from real situations and refer to music – or to nothing at all. The joyous absurdity of the works also lives in the often apparently non-existent connection between title and painting. Like the titles, the works’ visual motifs also spring up in the moment, from the subconscious. Each work is like a person, each with its own identity and special story.


Janne Räisänen (b. 1971) works in Berlin and Helsinki. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1998. In 1999, he was named Young Artist of the Year along with Janne Kaitala and Jukka Korkeila, and he received the Finnish Art Society’s Ducat Prize. In 2001, he was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award and, in 2008, received the William Thuring Foundation's main prize. Janne Räisänen’s exhibitions have been shown regularly in Germany and Finland in recent years, and his works are in public collections both in Finland and abroad, such as Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Saastamoinen Foundation, Sara Hildén Art Museum and the Swedish State Art Collection.