For CHART 2026, Helsinki Contemporary is proud to show a duo presentation of works by Ken Matsubara and Roland Persson.
Both artists work with themes of individual and collective memory.
Matsubara’s video and photographic installations deal with memory, time, and the transience of being, and explore the invisible forces and collective memory invested in objects.
Roland Persson’s hyperrealistic silicone sculptures draw on psychoanalysis, exploring the individual and collective unconscious. His dream-like works that depict humanity through representations of nature are at once both familiar and uncanny, real and surreal.
Ken Matsubara
Ken Matsubara is known for his installations combining video, photography and found objects, exploring themes of memory and impermanence. His work explores the fluctuating manner of memories that reside deep within our consciousness. By working with media such as photography and video, he visually draws upon the reflective property of images to explore the nature of memory. Matsubara believes such recollections are genetically inherent in our DNA, which contains vast knowledge from the past, extending beyond the individual self.
Ken Matsubara (b. 1949 in Tokyo, Japan, lives and works in Tokyo) has held solo exhibitions and participated in museum shows in Japan and internationally since the 1980s. His works are in major collections in Europe, the US, and Asia. Matsubara graduated from the Musashino Art University in Tokyo (1973).
Roland Persson
Roland Persson’s surrealistic works are based on hyper-realistic silicone casts of objects, animals, and plants. He explores the interface between consciousness and the subconscious, between humans and nature, and between the private and the public. As a material, the silicone allows Persson to include colour inside the material itself, instead of adding hues by painting, which makes the surface look very realistic. At first glance the sculptures almost seem like the objects they replicate, but upon closer look one can always find a twisted reality in them.
Roland Persson’s (b. 1963, Hudiksvall, Sweden, lives in Stockholm) works have been exhibited widely in the Nordics, Europe, Russia and Asia since the 1990s. He’s also produced several public sculptures in Sweden. Persson graduated from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts (1993). Recently he was awarded the Ars Fennica 2025 prize.
CHART 2026 | OPENING HOURS
Thursday 27 August, VIP Preview 11.00–19.00
Friday 28 August 11.00–19.00
Saturday 29 August 11.00–18.00
Sunday 30 August 11.00–17.00
For more information:
Olli Piippo, Owner and Director, Helsinki Contemporary
+358 40 566 0636
olli.piippo@helsinkicontemporary.com
Katja Räisänen, Sales Director, Helsinki Contemporary
+358 50 464 2911
katja.raisanen@helsinkicontemporary.com