PICNIC - vol. 2Group Exhibition 14.2.2026 – 8.3.2026

PICNIC vol. 2 is a group exhibition featuring three visual artists and one media artist. The works seek to reveal what is happening in the world and why. The world they depict is sombre, rendered in shades of black, grey and white.

Jonathan Ben-Ami’s (b.1984) paintings appear to emerge from his own surroundings and the trajectory of his life. They are personal tapestries comprised of interwoven elements. He says that when he is painting his gaze turns inward: “There is something vague, dense and shapeless inside that cannot be illuminated. I grasp what is available: memories, wounds and lived moments that pierce me. From these I try to construct a composition that I know is missing pieces – but I can feel a pulse at its centre. Encounter and non-encounter alternate in my paintings.”

Through his film Picnic – In Light Invisible to the Human Eye (2026), media artist and filmmaker Jan Ijäs (b. 1975) shows viewers the siege of the Gaza Strip and the genocide of Palestinians as seen from Israel, where families gather at the sites of war memorials to spend time together and watch the hostilities through binoculars. The ruins of Gaza are shot hauntingly on infrared film: the blue sky appears black, while people, plants and flowers glow white. Accompanying the images, a voiceover narrates the thoughts of those visiting the war memorials.

Artist Mika Karhu’s (b. 1969) works have always had a strong sense of socio-political engagement. He examines cultural and social structures and how they shape people and their interactions. Karhu’s works have addressed themes such as the structural and concrete forms of power exercised in society, the life stories of those who have suffered abuses of power, and totalitarian movements and their administration. In his works, Karhu asks what the nature of individual identity is in relation to that of the collective. Above all, he seems intent on revealing the illusions that operate beneath both our human and collective minds.

In his paintings, artist Teemu Korpela (b. 1980) also seems to try and burrow into layers buried beneath the individual and collective human mind, to peel them back, layer by layer. He describes his reflections on how art can show us the invisible: “I generally explore phenomena that define how we experience our own existence. These phenomena are often abstract but can be made tangible and visible through art.”

Rauli Heino