Niina Vatanen begins her artistic practice by searching through materials from archives, encyclopedias, and various digital sources. She then challenges and explores the notion of time as a mystery, unravelling the intricate workings of its passage. In her About Gravity and Universus series, she assembles found images into constellations that mirror the layered complexity of the cosmos. She approaches the concept of the universe through her own lens of time, conceiving it as a vast system of orbits, gravitational pulls, and continuous transformation. Her compositions echo the instability inherent in the notion of cosmological time, inviting viewers to reflect on how celestial phenomena shape human perception. In The Big Bang Theory (Dancer & Solar Eclipse), orbiting planets and cosmic events become intertwined with the human body. This evokes Aristotle’s theories on the movement of celestial bodies orbiting the Earth within crystalline spheres, and places female figures at the center of a poetic universe, reflecting on humanity’s broader relationship with the natural world.

Jyrki Parantainen’s works transform the photograph into a site of inquiry, layering historical imagery with pins, wires, and fragments of text to create dense constellations of meaning. In his Poetry of Circulation series, archival photographs and lithographs serve as a map for words drawn from philosophy, music, and art history. By tethering textual fragments to specific points within the image, his work further extends this methodology. Taut brass wires glinting against the night sky echo the luminous sweep of zodiacal light, while references to Einstein and Hawking anchor his imagery in scientific reflection. Constellations such as Lyra and Capricorn appear not as astronomical diagrams but as symbolic coordinates, markers of a personal cosmology that replaces religious faith with wonder toward the universe. Parantainen’s works function as both sculptures and conceptual maps, capturing the delicate alchemy of memory, emotion, and cosmic contemplation.

Known for his experiments in abstraction through analog photography, Niko Luoma uses light as his raw material, building up multiple exposures onto the same photo negative. Using only light, stencils, and color filters, he builds his images one shape at a time. His Adaptations series explores his fascination with reinterpreting artworks from art history that have either influenced him or shaped how we as a culture think about art. He analyzes the paintings by creating sketches that deconstruct each work based on its lines of perspective and counterpoints. His adaptation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi brings together cosmic structure and quiet meditation, using concentric rings of color that recall celestial spheres and cyclical cosmologies that when balanced together form a triangular alliance between the heart, head, and the soul.

From a quiet pier beneath the deepening night sky, Mikko Sinervo begins his cosmic reflection by counting stars, contemplating black holes, distant planets, and the lingering question Do the Stars Look the Same on the Other Side of the World? This series unfolds as a poetic meditation on the universe, where scientific imagery, from NASA photographs to astronomical diagrams, is transformed through imagination into new cosmic landscapes. His camera becomes a device of wonder and his studio an improvised observatory, as he gathers research and light to build an unfinished map of the cosmos, underscoring photography’s power not merely to record what is, but to envision what might be. These works propose visions rather than certainties and explore how distant celestial phenomena can be re-imagined through artistic interpretation.

For as long as humans have looked up into the night sky, the view has shaped our sense of wonder, fear, and curiosity. Constellations of Thoughts reflects on how contemporary artists interpret this cosmic gaze by asking how the expanding universe reshapes our understanding of time, space, and the fragile coordinates of our own existence.

Image: Niina Vatanen, Dancer, 2024, archival pigment print, 70 x 48.5 cm