Eero Yrjölä, Aleksi Kolmonen: When Our Sinful Souls Find an Angel in One Another
You tell me you dreamed of me and clouds. There was only me, smiling, and the clouds.
I gently sink into the image you have painted of me as an angelic figure who looks upon the world with tenderness.
The joint exhibition by Eero Yrjölä and Aleksi Kolmonen, When Our Sinful Souls Find an Angel in One Another, at Hippolyte Studio brings together photography, ceramics, and sound. The installation explores the essence of the angel through self-portraiture, playing with the abundance and emptiness of a nostalgic world of glossy picture cards.
The angel in the exhibition is norm-defying, radical, and queer. Yrjölä and Kolmonen draw on traditional angel aesthetics while simultaneously challenging the worldviews and ideologies associated with them. Although the angel is a culturally recognisable figure, it seems to elude more precise definitions of time and place. The angel is fluid: shifting from one state of being to another and flying between alternative realities.
For the artists, inner angelhood is a way of being – a conscious choice to experience the world through innocence and without shame. In Yrjölä and Kolmonen’s collaborative practice, authorship and different methods become intertwined. In the exhibition, a porcelain angel figure is given a fleshy counterpart.
Eero Yrjölä (b. 1990) explores experiences of the body, gender, and sexuality in their artistic practice. They work across a range of media, with a particular focus on installation. In recent years, they have explored the materiality of clay. Through clay, and almost by chance, layers of emotions and desires take shape, unfold, and breathe.
Yrjölä graduated with a Master of Arts from Aalto University in 2017. Their work has been exhibited, among other places, at WAM Turku City Art Museum and in an exhibition at Tampere Art Museum, where their first collaborative body of work with Aleksi Kolmonen was presented. Yrjölä’s works are held in the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation Collection at Rovaniemi Art Museum and in the collection of Tampere Art Museum.
Aleksi Kolmonen (b. 1996) creates nude self-portraits inspired by Finnish schlager music and calls himself an angel. Kolmonen is a Helsinki-based community artist working in the visual arts, primarily with constructed imagery. Central to his richly aestheticised visual world is the documentation of the queer community, as well as its active creation and strengthening. Through portraits, Kolmonen creates landscapes in which it is possible to be seen and encountered. Alongside his visual art practice, he produces cultural events and is a member of several musical ensembles. For the queer community, Kolmonen organises karaoke and singalong events, performs as the lead singer of the schlager group Homoiskelmäyhtye Harhaviesti, and is a member of Helsinki’s Out ’n Loud gay men’s choir.
Kolmonen studied at Pekka Halonen Academy and Turku Arts Academy, from which he graduated in 2024. His work has been exhibited, among other places, in the Spektri exhibition at WAM Turku City Art Museum, at Seinäjoki Art Hall, and at LOU Gallery in Helsinki. At The Queer Gala, Kolmonen was named Queer Artist of the Year 2025. He has spoken about his artistic practice at the Ateneum and Kiasma, as well as in several panel discussions.
The exhibition has been supported by the Art Promotion Centre (Taike).
image: Aleksi Kolmonen
Free entrance