After half a year of renovations, the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art in Helisnki, Kiasma, will reopen its doors to the public on Friday with an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.
Consisting of more than 250 works, the retrospective exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma offers a broad overview of the key periods of Mapplethorpe’s career. In their aspiration for perfection, Mapplethorpe’s pictures blend beauty and eroticism with pain, pleasure and death.
Mapplethorpe also photographed his celebrity friends such as Patti Smith, Andy Warhol and Richard Gere. Although solidly anchored in their time, his photographs are also universal and topical even today.
Arriving from Paris to Helsinki, the high-profile exhibition is a unique opportunity to learn about the art and life of one of the most important photographic artists of our time. The exhibition is curated by Jérôme Neutres from Paris with Director Pirkko Siitari and Chief Curator Marja Sakari from Kiasma.
Mapplethorpe died in 1989 at age 42 from complications of AIDS.
The exhibition, which comes to Kiasma from the Grand Palais in Paris, runs until mid-September.
