Miettinen Collection: WHERE ARE WE NOW – Sammlung Philara (Düsseldorf) | 29.06.-21.09.2025

From 29 June 2025, the Philara Collection in Düsseldorf will present the group exhibition “Where are we now” with 150 works by over 80 artists. The exhibition offers a unique overview of the Miettinen collection and presents it in this comprehensive form for the first time.

Image above: Alexander Basil, untitled, 2023, oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm © the artist Courtesy Miettinen Collection.

The exhibition spans all rooms of the Philara collection and begins in the large atrium with one of the central themes of the Miettinen collection: landscape and nature. This theme characterises the origins of the collection, which was founded by Timo Miettinen and his mother with a focus on 19th and 20th century Finnish landscape painting. Since 2004, Timo Miettinen has systematically expanded the collection to include works of international contemporary art, which are at the centre of the exhibition. The works on display cover a period from the 1980s to the present day and offer a comprehensive and varied insight into the complexity of the collection.

Particularly noteworthy is the collection’s focus on Finnish contemporary art, which often receives less attention in an international context. The exhibition provides a prominent platform for Finnish artists, including Elina Brotherus, Ola Kolehmainen and Tommi Toija. Elina Brotherus works primarily with photography, exploring the boundaries between self-portrait, landscape and staging in her works. Her images often address personal narratives and combine autobiographical elements with art-historical references.

Ola Kolehmainen, on the other hand, focuses on architectural structures and their reflections, which he abstracts in large-format photographs and transforms into monochrome worlds of colour. His works are characterised by a meditative, almost minimalist visual language. Tommi Toija is known for his expressive, often grotesquely exaggerated sculptures, which deal with existential themes such as vulnerability and loneliness with a mixture of humour and melancholy. His figures have a childlike appearance, yet carry profound emotional and socio-critical dimensions.

The exhibition is organised in a dynamic alternation between monographic rooms and thematically structured areas. Artistic positions of particular importance to the collection are given dedicated rooms, including Leiko Ikemura, Secundino Hernández, Rainer Fetting, Kirsi Mikkola, Georg Baselitz and Tom of Finland. Secundino Hernández was supported by Miettinen at an early stage, and the collection owns one of the world’s most extensive groups of works by the artist.

The exhibition includes his cycle of the 12 Apostles, which creates an abstract, gesturally charged reinterpretation of religious iconography based on the works of El Greco in Toledo. Leiko Ikemura, another central figure in the collection, has designed her own room for the exhibition, in which her paintings and sculptures are staged in an atmospheric tension between dream and reality. Her works oscillate between figuration and abstraction and thematise existential questions of identity, nature and transience.

In addition to the monographic rooms, thematic rooms condense central trends in the collection and create atmospheric dialogues between different forms of artistic expression. The spectrum ranges from constructivist art and abstract painting to portrait painting, queer and political art, design, fashion and floral subjects. The curatorial structure of the exhibition allows visitors to understand the collector’s diverse areas of interest and to place the works in new, unexpected contexts. The Miettinen Collection can thus be experienced in all its extraordinary diversity, while at the same time reflecting the visionary eye of a collector who has developed in-depth expertise in each of these artistic trends.

Timo Miettinen has had close ties to Germany for decades – not least through his professional activities at a company in the Sauerland region, where his eldest daughter was born, and his long-standing residence in southern Germany. These deep roots logically led to the purchase of the Wilhelminian-style house on Marburger Straße in Charlottenburg around fifteen years ago. There, his early interest in collecting found its institutional expression in the Salon Dahlmann, named after the former owner of the house.

For ten years now, it has served as a venue for regular exhibitions from its own collection, in cooperation with other collections, as well as thematic presentations, complemented by readings and concerts. While the collection initially focused heavily on contemporary Finnish art, its focus quickly expanded to include important German and international positions. The Miettinen Collection continues to cultivate and develop salon culture.

Miettinen sees himself as a committed promoter of Finnish art abroad and has worked tirelessly to raise its profile, particularly in Germany. At the same time, he uses his extensive networks to establish German and international artists in Finland and beyond. His patronage is reflected in exhibitions in Helsinki, Paris, Spain and at the Weserburg Museum in Bremen, always with the aim of promoting cultural exchange and facilitating new dialogues. The salon, which is open to the public in Berlin, serves as a platform that brings together young artists and established artists in a lively exchange.

This spirit of intercultural dialogue also gave rise to the collaboration with the Philara Collection in Düsseldorf. The exhibition WHERE ARE WE NOW offers a comprehensive insight into the breadth of Miettinen’s collecting activities, spanning Finnish contemporary art as well as renowned German and international positions. This is the first comprehensive presentation of the Miettinen Collection in the Rhineland and enables the public to discover numerous artists in this region for the first time. The exhibition thus makes a valuable contribution to the diverse cultural landscape of the Rhineland with its distinctive collector scene.

Under the title In Other Hands, the Philara Collection, one of the most important institutions for contemporary art in the Rhineland, will present a selection of its own holdings at the Miettinen Collection in Berlin starting in April 2025. Gil Bronner, the founder of the collection, pursues a similar approach to Timo Miettinen, having established a dynamic venue for contemporary art with his private museum in Düsseldorf over many years. The collaboration brings together two collectors with different focuses, but who share a common vision in their commitment to young art in combination with international positions and the promotion of public discourse.

With works by: 
Etel Adnan, Joachim Bandau, Georg Baselitz, Amoako Boafo, Louise Bourgeois, Elina Brotherus, Miriam Cahn, Sarah Cunningham, Tracey Emin, Rainer Fetting, Tom of Finland, Oska Gutheil, Secundino Hernández, Leiko Ikemura, Justyna Janetzek, Eemil Karila, Kirsi Mikkola, Lars-Gunnar Nordström, Francis Picabia, Janne Räisänen, Aurora Reinhard, Julian Schnabel, Emanuel Seitz, Barthélémy Toguo, Tommi Toija, Lee Ufan, Stanley Whitney u.a.

WHEN?

Press event with exhibition tour: Friday, 27. June 2025, 12:00 pm.

Exhibition dates: Sunday, 29. June – Sunday, 21. September 2025

WHERE?

Sammlung Philara
Birkenstraße 47,
40233 Düsseldorf