From November 2023, Artor Jesus Inkerö will open gateways into other spaces from the Kirpilä Art Collection. The chandeliers in Inkerö’s exhibition Trophy will become doubled on the ceiling of the gallery’s ‘everyday living room’, while rugged ceramic sculptures provide a stark contrast to the collection’s porcelains.

The exhibition includes works previously unseen in Finland: Short Reach (2019), which was filmed in Amsterdam, and ceramics from the My Hard Core installation (2021), seen at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. The finishing touch is a new series of photographs entitled Big Ass (2023), whose inspirations are the artist’s own body and queer gym aesthetics.

“When the Kirpilä Art Collection’s space was transformed from a home into an art gallery, it underwent a similar neutralisation process to that of the Oude Kerk, where I shot Short Reach: there, religious elements were removed from the church because it is currently mostly used for other purposes. In my mind, these spaces combine to be one and the same,” Inkerö explains.

Although contemporary art exhibitions have been held at Kirpilä since 2017, Inkerö’s Trophy is the first-ever solo show to take place there.

“We are interested to see what interpretations of the gallery and its collections the artist can come up with. Our home-like environment offers many opportunities for presenting art, and in Inkerö’s case it is fascinating to see how their works simultaneously merge into the space and wrestle against harmony,” says museum director Johanna Ruohonen.

Artor Jesus Inkerö (b. 1989) is a Finnish visual artist, whose works have been seen at the New Museum in New York, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, NOON Projects gallery in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki and SALTS gallery in Basel. Inkerö has worked in residence at London’s Somerset House and Amsterdam’s Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. The themes that Inkerö processes through their exhibitions, performances, public artworks and projects are questions related to queer identity and society.

The Kirpilä Art Collection is an art museum maintained by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, presenting modern Finnish art collection of Dr Juhani Kirpilä (1931−1988) in the collector’s former home.

Inkerö is currently working under a two-year grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. They have also received funding from the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, the Saastamoinen Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux.

Artor Jesus Inkerö, Trophy, Kirpilä Art Collection, 29 November 2023 − 3 March 2024. Open to the public free of charge, 2 pm–6 pm on Wednesdays and 2 pm–4 pm on Sundays. Group visits are also available by arrangement at other times.

Guided tours will be conducted by the artist in Finnish at 1:30 pm on Sunday 3 December and Sunday 4 February, and in English at 3 pm on Sunday 4 February. Free entry.

Caption: Artor Jesus Inkerö, 2019, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, the Netherlands