HELSINKI.- Petri Ala-Maunus’s landscapes revel in extremes and collisions. Within a single painting, a violently raging storm may coexist with balmy vistas bathed in soft sunlight – shifting abruptly from apocalyptic ruin to utopian serenity. What unites his oeuvre is its deliberate excess: a quality that might be described as hyper-landscape. His works overflow with hyperbolic beauty and an overwhelming wealth of detail, through which the artist consciously unsettles the traditions of landscape painting. Nothing modest or subdued holds interest for Ala-Maunus; instead, he is drawn to dystopian–utopian terrains that overturn the conventions and expectations of the genre.

The exhibition title, Weltlandschaft (World Landscape), refers to a term used in the early sixteenth-century Netherlands to describe a type of Western painting that presents an imagined panoramic landscape from an elevated vantage point. Ala-Maunus’s paintings likewise depict no specific, real-world locations. Rather, they are composites assembled from diverse sources – drawn less from direct observation of nature than from vast reservoirs of existing imagery.

For nearly three decades, Ala-Maunus has devoted himself to landscape painting. His sustained effort to disrupt tradition has only deepened his engagement with the genre. In his earlier work, he approached the theme through strategies of kitsch and conceptualism, employing seriality and repetition. His compositions reveal affinities with nineteenth-century North American and German landscape painting, particularly the romantic-realist Düsseldorf School. At the same time, he draws freely from popular culture, notably the visual language of metal music album covers.

Petri Ala-Maunus (b. 1970) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2011. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Amos Rex, the Ateneum Art Museum, and HAM Helsinki Art Museum. His works are held in major public and private collections, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Amos Rex, the Sara Hildén Art Museum, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, the Saastamoinen Foundation, and the Serlachius Museums. In 2010, he received the William Thuring Prize from the Finnish Art Society, and in 2019 he was nominated for the Ars Fennica Prize.