Three temporary exhibitions per year of Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum offer top-quality Finnish fine art. The permanent exhibition The Long-distance Atelier focuses on the life and career of the sculptor Kimmo Pyykkö. During your visit to the museum, you can also explore the architecture of the award-winning Kangasala Arts Centre. You can find us in the heart of the beautiful town of Kangasala, 20 minutes from Tampere.
Strange play (20 September 2025 – 11 January 2026)
There are those who know how to play the part of a child and others who don’t even realize that they’re playing the part of an adult. Where are the boundaries and the common rules of play drawn? How do toys play when they’re left alone?
Ilai Elias Lehto’s solo exhibition extends from the artist’s studio beyond the boundaries of the playground, challenging the audience to explore the limits of play at the Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum from 20 September 2025 to 11 January 2026.
Ilai Elias Lehto (b. 1988, Joensuu) is a sculptor from North Karelia, eastern Finland, now based in Tampere. He primarily works with soft and recycled materials, mixing and fusing the traditions and techniques of fine arts and textiles craftsmanship. A recurring element in many of his works is the use of soft or furry surfaces that invite touch, such as the faux fur of plush toys, corduroy, or felting wool. The toy-like shapes and gentle textures in Lehto’s art often conceal profound questions about life itself.
Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum, 1st and 2nd floor
Ilai Elias Lehto: All is Full of Love (2024)
Photo: Jussi Koivunen
Kimmo Pyykkö: The Long-distance Atelier
The art museum’s permanent exhibition presents a journey through the sculptor and professor Kimmo Pyykkö’s atelier. From his childhood and adolescence in Kangasala, Pyykkö’s road took him to art education in Helsinki and a diverse career spanning six decades in the Finnish art scene.
Permanent Exhibition, 3rd floor
The Many Faces of Teemu Luoto (31 January – 24 May 2026)
For over six decades, ceramic artist Teemu Luoto (born in 1941) and his 1971 creation, Taidepappila Art Centre in Kuhmalahti, have been a unique part of the cultural history of the Tampere Region.
”The Many Faces of Teemu Luoto” is a retrospective exhibition bringing Teemu Luoto’s multifaceted work to the Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum. Luoto is particularly well-known for his ceramic works based on animal characters, as well as his masks and homo-erotic sculptures.
Animals have been the subject closest to Luoto’s heart. Indeed, he has also approached other subjects through animals. Occasional hints of fairytale creatures appear in his works, and the animal characters also sometimes function as a tool for queer self-expression. As a result, the exhibition examines Luoto’s art through the perspective of embodiment and sexuality – themes which he has handled fearlessly during times when presenting them in art form has been pushed to the margins or wholly rejected. The exhibition also features a wide selection of masks created using the death mask technique. Their gaze is intense, sometimes mysterious, but always contains ingredients of storytelling and symbolism.
Teemu Luoto’s works – like his persona – are possessed of a warm humour, which completely comes through in his works. Luoto’s relationship with his works is very close: he shapes the clay with a deep concentration, and constructs a personality, an identity and a life for his sculptures. The language of his ceramic art is sometimes purposely rough, but occasionally the softness of clay comes through in the end result.
The Kuhmalahti Taidepappila Art Center, which, due to municipal mergers, is now located in Kangasala, is an inextricable part of Teemu Luoto’s life and artistic heritage, and its future will be secured by the Teemu Luoto Art Foundation created in 2025. The exhibition “The Many Faces of Teemu Luoto” includes items and works from the Taidepappila’s surroundings, and they bring their own characteristic additions to the story of the exhibition.
Teemu Luoto: Two faces (Kahdet kasvot), 2018. Photo: Tiia Ennala
Emmi Kallio: Only One Way to Be Free (Vapautensa vanki), 2025. Photo: Liisa Mäkinen
Emmi Kallio: The Storm
Emmi Kallio’s exhibition at the Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum provides a unique compilation of her works, including a large site-specific mural, new acrylic paintings hung as an installation and a collection of paper-based works comprising both prints and sketches. A selection of works from exhibitions over the last few years provides context for the exhibition as a whole. The exhibition is being curated by Veikko Halmetoja.
Emmi Kallio is a visual artist whose paintings seem to represent abstract expressionism at first glance. Gradually, they start to reveal representational elements, snippets of stories and recognisable details. Although Kallio does not represent abstract expressionism in the purest sense, her kinship to the movement is evident. She paints with her whole self. The movements and physical dimensions of the artist are visible in the artworks. Fierce brush strokes, gushes of paint and vivid colours make for rich and delicious art.
In a way, the name of the exhibition, Storm, summarises the themes of Emmi Kallio’s works. In recent years, Kallio has painted a lot of powerful emotions, such as love as seen through opera. She is intrigued by extremities. Kallio writes that she finds the extreme weather conditions brought about by climate change to be frightening. ”There is something ominous in the air, literally. When it rains, it rains too much to seem normal. When a season changes, it changes too soon, too late or too abruptly. The warmth of the sun carries a strange burning sensation, and a heatwave comes at a time when your inner clock is telling you to start wearing sweaters. Something is seriously wrong. Everything is changing, everything is getting a bit strange.”
In addition to concrete phenomena, Storm is also a metaphor for surges of emotions, crises of life, creativity and social upheaval. On the other hand, it can symbolise renewal and purification – washing away the old and beginning something new. The themes of the exhibition can also be read though the William Shakespeare play of a related name, The Tempest. Kallio addresses the relationship between illusion and reality, the force of manipulation, power and the use of power. The same themes are present in her earlier, opera-themed works.
Emmi Kallio graduated as a visual artist in Tampere. She has held several private exhibitions in Helsinki. Her works have been exhibited in the Pirkanmaa region at Gallery Saskia, Rajatila Gallery as well as the Finlayson Art Area summer exhibition and the Mänttä Art Festival.
The exhibition takes place on the 1st and 2nd floor at the Kimmo Pyykkö Art Museum from 13 June 2026 until 10 January 2027.
Opening hours
Tue-Wed 11–17, Thu 11–19, Fri-Sat 11–17, Sun 11–15, Mon closed
Groups also by arrangement
Exceptions
Mon 22.12. – mon 29.12. closed
Tue 30.12. 11-17
Wed 31.12. 11-17
Thu 1.1.2026 closed
Tue 6.1.2026 11-17
Closed due to exhibition changeover Mon 12.1. – Fri 30.1.2026 closed
Entrance fees:
10€/6€/Museokortti (Finnish Museum card)/Under 18-year-old for free of charge
Guidances
Guided tour every Sunday (28.9.2025-11.1.2026, excluding Sun 28.12.) at 1 pm;
included in the entrance fee.
Group reservations
040 773 0196
Guided tours for groups 50/70€ + entrance fees
Meetings and events 0400 304 530
