Ville Kumpulainen: Side Pocket

Ville Kumpulainen is interested in how images, materials and objects enter into dialogue and shape our experience of space. He photographs his surroundings and collects images of different spaces from books, magazines, guides and archives. This material forms the basis of photographic collages in which forgotten visual realities come together in unexpected juxtapositions. In the exhibition, the collages are accompanied by found objects, including balls and spark screen mesh.

In his work, Kumpulainen applies his own distinctive rules of composition, exploring how repetition transforms an individual mark into a structure and an organic form into a geometric system. Cutting paper by hand and shaping image surfaces into sculptural collage elements establish a direct, bodily relationship with the material. Alongside cutting, obscuring is a key means for Kumpulainen to disrupt the spatial logic within images, constructing an image while simultaneously calling it into question. Abstract forms conceal parts of the representational images, directing the viewer’s attention to their edges and to what remains peripheral. In his photograms, by contrast, it is the act of obscuring that creates the image, as an object blocks the light and leaves a trace on a light-sensitive surface.

Side Pocket opens up views into the layers of images, spaces and memory. With a collector’s eye, Kumpulainen seeks out hidden spaces in discarded objects and forgotten materials. The collection of envelopes featured in the exhibition began with old envelopes found in a bin, their patterned security linings catching his attention. In the collages, these surfaces, designed to conceal the contents, are combined with words and symbols. The protected interior of an envelope also suggests a connection to our own inner world: what we reveal and what we keep hidden from the gaze of others.

Ville Kumpulainen (b. 1988, Rovaniemi) is a Helsinki-based visual artist who takes an experimental approach to spaces and objects through image-making. He graduated with a degree in fine arts from Turku Arts Academy in 2016 and from the master’s programme in photography at Aalto University in 2019. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and internationally. His photobook Out of Sight was published by the German publisher Hatje Cantz in 2017. In 2025, he received the Finnish Art Society’s designated William Thuring Prize in recognition of his artistic work.

The artist’s work and the exhibition have been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Finnish Heritage Agency