Pasi Kostiainen: “Dazzling” (2020), print on aluminium plate, 89 × 120 cm
THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY SUMMER OF THE SCULPTURE PARK
[40 years since the first exhibition in 1985 / 10 years since the passing of Laila Pullinen]
The anniversary exhibitions consist of four distinct artistic entities in which four artists – some together with their working groups – enter into dialogue with Laila Pullinen. In part this highlights the timelessness and universality of certain themes and on the other hand, the passage of time and its inevitable weight. The dialogue between living artists and a deceased “master” is energizing in both directions: some themes and subjects remain eternally relevant, while others take on new meaning when viewed from the perspective that time creates.
Mikko Rasila & Laila Pullinen — “No One, or Anyone”
Photographic artist Mikko Rasila is known for his large-scale black-and-white photographs that abstract the nude male figure, in which the male body appears through the artist’s lens in surprising forms – like an abstract landscape or a shimmering mirage, yet still intimate and mysterious. The reception of his work on various social media platforms has been unexpected: certain images have been censored – a process that is ongoing and a continual source of stress and frustration for the artist. In this respect, the reception echoes in an eerily similar way the controversy that surrounded Pullinen’s Nada series in the 1970s: they were labeled pornographic.
In the Atelier Gallery, these two artists and their bodies of work are placed side by side, challenging the viewer to see nudity beyond the lens of pornography: an ensemble inspired by Classical ideas of beauty, where aesthetics and eroticism hold equal weight, and where the nude figure expresses surrender and vulnerability, but also divine harmony of proportions and beauty that reflects and contextualizes itself.
Marika Hyvärinen & Working Group — “DECAYING: A Decaying Space for Performing Arts and Science”
The southwestern slope of the Nissbacka manor area has lain quiet for decades. Composer and sound artist Marika Hyvärinen has for the past year constructed there a decaying space made from pruning materials collected in the sculpture park – a living installation that supports biodiversity, particularly deadwood-dependent insects, and promotes species conservation. As time passes, the decaying space transforms: insects and other organisms move into the structures, and eventually it disappears. In summer 2025, the space becomes a stage for the performing arts, offering contemporary dance and music performances, insect knowledge, poetry, essays, and performance art. The project is supported by the Kone Foundation.
In many ways, the decaying space is also a performance in itself, offering audiences a direct view into natural processes: decomposition, fungi, insects, and the cycles of decay and renewal. The western hill beside the decaying space has, since Pullinen’s time, largely functioned in a similar way as a protective and approach zone, a buffer – but also an oasis – between the more refined and controlled manor park and the modern urban environment.
Pasi Kostiainen — “A Leap in Time: Images of Family and Letting Go”
Vantaa-based photographer and writer Pasi Kostiainen documents the final stages of his mother’s life in large-scale photographs that are both deeply intimate and universally resonant: plain and unadorned in their everyday reality, yet on the other end of the spectrum almost timelessly abstract. In these images, the transition between life and death appears as a meaningful bridge of light: harsh in its finality yet ultimately liberating in its honesty.
The series has been shown in solo exhibitions at Kaapelitehdas (Valssaamo) in 2023 and Raasepori’s Fotocentrum in 2024, but when displayed on the walls of Laila Pullinen’s Home Museum, it is hoped to communicate in an entirely new way with its intimate surroundings, which cannot help but amplify its message – especially as 2025 marks ten years since the passing of Laila Pullinen.
Teatteri Vantaa / Anne Nielsen — “ACTS OF LOVE — A monologue about art, womanhood, and being a female artist, through the words of Laila Pullinen”
The most pioneering and bold project of LPVK’s anniversary year is a co-production between the Laila Pullinen Foundation and Teatteri Vantaa. This dramatized monologue, based on interview material, brings to life the figure of Laila Pullinen through a blend of truth and imagination. Teatteri Vantaa’s powerhouse Anne Nielsen steps into Pullinen’s work overalls, giving voice to the artist who passed away ten years ago, here and now, before our eyes – in the very space she once created and worked in. Performed in the Nissbacka atelier, the piece incorporates Pullinen’s own tools and objects related to her sculpting processes.
Duration: 50 minutes. Ten performances in August and September 2025, see Teatteri Vantaa’s website for detailed schedules – tickets are also available there. Director: Osku Heiskanen, text: Jean Ramsay – Laila Pullinen: Anne Nielsen
One artist per decade: the human figure and its various dimensions, nature and its processes, time and timelessness – Pullinen’s message and values are reinforced through the work and working methods of these four artists. Certain struggles continue from one generation to the next, while other achievements in turn bind together time and timelessness, bridging the divides between life and death.
Nissbacka, 28 February 2025
Jean Ramsay
Museum Director
EXHIBITION OPEN 5.6.–31.8.2025 THU–FRI–SAT–SUN 11–17
FOR GROUPS BY RESERVATION FROM 1.5.2025
RESERVATIONS / FURTHER INFORMATION: info@lailapullinen.fi