Out of the Frame

The exhibition Out of the Frame – Risto Vilhunen presents the extensive life work of visual artist Risto Vilhunen. The exhibition is open from 17 June to 22 August 2021 and it has been compiled from the collection of the Vantaa Art Museum.

Risto Vilhunen’s (b. 1945) career kicked off in the 1960s, when he became known for his colorful works of Pop Art that broke out of the form of the frame. In the early 1970s Vilhunen took a turn from Pop Art towards realistic landscape painting. He later founded a sculpture park on his property in Sotunki, Vantaa, and adopted the artist name Leonardo da Vilhu.

Out of the Frame – Risto Vilhunen offers a crosscutting view of Vilhunen’s versatile and substantial artistic production. The exhibition includes works from different stages in Vilhunen’s career, from his student years at the Fine Arts Academy of Finland all the way up to the 2000s. The retrospective exhibition has been compiled from the Risto Vilhunen Collection of the Vantaa Art Museum, which he donated to the City of Vantaa in 2009. The collection comprises more than 6 000 works, including for example paintings, prints, collages, drawings and sketches. This is the first time for works from the collection to be presented to the public at this scale. The exhibition features a number of works from Vilhunen that have been seen very rarely. An extensive collection publication will be published in connection to the exhibition.

The exhibition at Artsi introduces Vilhunen as a highly versatile and productive artist whose oeuvre is strongly characterized by a disregard of boundaries as well as the thought of repetition. Vilhunen has not wanted to be limited by any movement or technique but has during his prolific career altered between different styles and techniques, often returning to the same themes again and again. The artist is inspired by his close environment and art history alike.

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