Museo

The majority of Aapo Huhta’s new works initially appear thoroughly abstract. At first, one sees only monochrome, asymmetric fields of ambiguous proportions. Stark contrasts, crisp outlines.

Black continents adrift, their dense mass rising out of a pale, primordial sea.

Then, suddenly, one begins observing infinitesimal details. Subtle shading within the dark areas. Tufts of hair. As the brain processes the signals received via the optic nerve, Huhta’s works seem to transfigure. A three-dimensional space opens up within them, and the previously silent, flat forms gain mass and volume. They become bodies in the most prosaic sense of the word; that is to say, they become human bodies. Within a split second, the impression of immaterial abstraction has crumbled.

This chain of events is inevitable. It is, after all, within our human nature to perceive our own species on the basis of the subtlest of visual cues: we see faces in the surfaces of celestial bodies, sex organs in flowers, and outstretched arms in the branches of trees. Once discerned, the bodies in Huhta’s works cannot be unseen.

And yet, Museo is undeniably Huhta’s most obscure series to date. Known as an artist working with photography, he has gradually moved away from the traditional documentary approach of his early career. As it stands, Huhta is no longer concerned with depicting—or, indeed, capturing—any specific events or decisive moments in time. What has at some point taken place in front of the camera is not of any particular importance. Many of these new works are to be understood as literal photographs: they are drawings, graphé, made with light, phōtós, using analogue methods.

By rejecting figurative norms, Huhta dismantles the established principles of photography. In Museo, he abandons realism and purposefully obfuscates the role of the camera in his creative process. He presents the human body in a way that leaves the viewer uncertain whether the image originates in physical reality at all.

The restrained aesthetic and ambiguity of Museo carry an existential charge. Huhta frames the body as mutable organic material. This is a neutral fact rather than a lament over the ephemerality of life. Visual signs of ageing such as sagging, wrinkles, lumps and growths are not inherently sad, and their supposed ugliness is but a flimsy construct. In earlier works such as Omatandangole (2019), the human form has seemed to function as a representation of mankind. Such symbolism has been stripped away in Museo, with Huhta now first and foremost depicting the body as a biological entity.

A quote from John Dewey succinctly sums up Huhta’s artistic practice: “Each medium says something that cannot be uttered as well or as completely in any other tongue.” This is especially true in the case of Museo, a work that is somehow both sparse and extraordinarily detailed. Such a contradiction cannot be translated into any other language—it only exists here, within the grammar of Huhta’s photographs. – Helen Korpak

In the Museo series, Aapo Huhta approaches the camera less as a tool for documenting than as a means of gathering light. In these photographs, the human body appears as silhouettes, masses, and lines.

In part of the series, bodies are placed before the camera and used almost as templates to form simple geometric shapes. Other photographs draw on gestures collected from various archives. Embraces, struggles, and dances are lifted from their original contexts until only the gestures remain. As identity fades, the body appears as a site where time leaves its traces, with gravity as its sculptor. Photographs for the series were shot between 2024 and 2025.

Museo at Galleria Heino, 14.3.2026-12.4.2026.