Exhibitions
Current exhibitions
Antti Laitinen
The Forest Within
9.5.–18.10.2026
Hämeenlinna Art Museum is delighted to announce the launch of The Forest Within by Finnish artist Antti Laitinen, which will run in the museum’s Lohrmann Building from 9 May until 18 October 2026. Alongside a selection of Antti Laitinen’s earlier works, The Forest Within also presents visitors with a series of new works created for this exhibition. The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, 9 May 2026, 11:00–17:00.
In Antti Laitinen’s art, the human hand shapes the natural world. His artworks assert a harmonious presence amidst a landscape, in which, through his intervention, something surprising and unexpected is always revealed. They are an invitation to view familiar natural scenes in an entirely new way. In recent years, forests have been a seemingly endless source of not only ideas but materials for the artist and served as a studio space for him too.
Much of Antti Laitinen’s art is characterised by a playfully experimental energy; the irrepressible desire to turn an impossible idea into reality. Everything from small shrubs and fully grown trees to an entire stretch of woodland have been disassembled, manipulated, rebuilt and rearranged by the artist. At times, this work involves sweaty manual labour that pushes the artist to test the limits of his own physical capabilities. The artist’s process unfolds slowly and deliberately and is most often captured in the form of photographic and video works, although he also works with sculpture, installation, performance and environmental art. Much of his work is based on the forests surrounding his rural home, but it also takes him further afield, both in Finland and to other countries around the world.
In preparation for The Forest Within, the artist based himself in Hämeenlinna in November 2025. His Tangle (2025, pigment print) was shot in the nearby Varikonniemi woodland when the ground was still bare and the first snow yet to arrive. The sphere the artist created for this artwork using tree branches will appear as part of the exhibition in the form of a kinetic sculpture.
Antti Laitinen, The Forest Within will be presented in dialogue with Exploring the Mystery of Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola, set to open in the museum’s Engel Building in June 2026. This line up has not come about by chance; the two artists share a prior connection, with Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola (b. 1937) having served as Antti Laitinen’s final project supervisor at the Arts Academy in Turku. Laitinen has also cited Takalo-Eskola, and his An Attempt to Cross a Swamp performance (1972) as a significant influence.
Antti Laitinen (b. 1975, Raahe) trained at the Arts Academy in Turku and the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. His recent solo exhibitions include EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and several galleries internationally, and he has participated in many high-profile international group exhibitions. Antti Laitinen is also one of the artists featured in the Climate Clock public art trail, part of the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture programme.
To create Tangle, which will feature as part of The Forest Within exhibition, Antti Laitinen joined forces with staff from Hämeenlinna Art Museum and the council’s urban environment team as well as inmates from a local prison to collect woody debris resulting from forest thinning operations at two local sites. The assistance kindly provided by the City of Hämeenlinna’s Urban Environment Department and Green Spaces Department proved invaluable to the artist’s creative process. Hämeenlinna Art Museum would also like to thank the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church’s Hattula Parish for their support.
Antti Laitinen, The Forest Within is generously supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.
Upcoming exhibitions
Exploring the Mystery of Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola
11.6.–11.10.2026
In summer 2026, visitors to Hämeenlinna Art Museum will have the opportunity to experience a landmark exhibition covering seven decades of art by Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola.
A visual and performance artist, Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola’s oeuvre is characterised by its spontaneity, personal touch points and a commitment to visual experimentation. Motifs typical of his work – fish, self-portraits, flowing water, boggy marshlands, cosmic abstractions and meaningful connections with both the natural world and other people – appear throughout. These hark back to the formative experiences that shaped his childhood and in which the very mystery of life is encapsulated.
Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola (b. 1937 Keminmaa) is a founder member of the multidisciplinary Elonkorjaajat collective. He served as senior lecturer and later as rector of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s. In 2006, he was presented with the Ars Fennica Lifetime achievement award by the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation.
The exhibition is curated by Hämeenlinna Art Museum curator Tanja Pääskynen.
Hämeenlinna Art Museum 75 years 2027
Marjukka Vainio, The Weight of Seeing, 4.12.2026–18.4.2027
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, April ≈ 61°01′ 24°27′, 4.12.2026–24.5.2027
Save Our Art! The Journey from Vyborg to Hämeenlinna, 21.5.–24.10.2027
Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen: Wormholes, 18.6.2027–Spring 2028
Future NOW, 26.11.2027–Spring 2028
Read more about the exhibitions: