In April-May, Galleria Sculptor will host a joint exhibition by Kate Ruck & Petra Vehviläinen. The artists consider how their distinct approaches touch on the same world, even if only in passing.

In Hevoset karkaa | The horses are fleeting, Ruck gathers nostalgia at a distance, uncovering how even the smallest turn of phrasing can summon the myths that shape our affections and unsettle our certainties across geography. Vehviläinen creates a body of work for Sculptor’s Gallery that examines ornament and cultural heritage through architectural sculptures shaped from scrap metal.

Kate Ruck (b. USA) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, with close ties to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Her materially grounded works open spaces of association around fragmentation, inheritance, and cosmology, inviting layers of memories and different sensibilities to surface. She is interested in how traditions and cultural narratives persist in fractured or shifting forms, and how acts of making can honor and renew them. Each work emerges through relation, shaped by the materials and histories that move through it. Much of her practice develops in response to sites, often outside conventional gallery spaces, where place and environment become active participants.

Ruck’s work has been exhibited internationally in Europe and the United States. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts Helsinki (FI) and was part of the inaugural cohort of The Centre of Nordic Otherwise (DK). Previously, she was an artist-in-residence at Factum Arte in Madrid (ES), and her projects have been supported by the Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Petra Vehviläinen is a visual artist based in Helsinki who works with sculptural installations, drawing on traditional craft techniques such as forging, blacksmithing, metal casting, and weaving. Her practice often features works in which discarded or found objects and materials form spatial weaves. The works explore themes rooted in posthumanism and new materialism, emphasizing the active role of matter, materials, and space in these processes.

Vehviläinen’s works have been presented not only in gallery settings but also site-specifically in urban and natural locations, both in Finland and abroad. She holds a MFA in Sculpture (2024) and a MA in Directing (2013) from the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her projects have been supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the Kone Foundation. In 2024, she was awarded the Grönqvist Scholarship by the Hélène and Walter Grönqvist Foundation to support her artistic work.