Tradition may seem incongruous alongside contemporary art, and yet much as the Socratic dialogues established a manner of open forum and lineage of discourse, the Helsinki School has created its own through its cultivation of an approach to making art. Referring to a conglomeration of artists from the photography programme at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, also known as TaiK, the Helsinki School was established about thirty years ago as theoretical discourse evolved in the department. Moving away from a purely photojournalistic approach, students were taught to consider themselves artists through being encouraged to explore conceptually, as well as creating portfolios and artist statements.

Timothy Persons, curator and senior lecturer at the school since 1982, founded and acts as director for Gallery TaiK, a virtual gallery representing the group’s artists. Since 1995, Persons has assisted in gaining a wider audience for the Helsinki School and curated the majority of their exhibitions internationally, now represented at some of the world’s leading photography fairs.

However, despite being referred to as a school, the Helsinki School does not take on a particular aesthetic. The artists are instead affiliated through having attended the same programme, in which one generation of artists may teach another. Currently, the school has four complete generations. The first generally consisted of professors who encouraged conceptual thought. The second generation, students, were often overtly conceptual thinkers, at times even forgoing concrete portfolios. The third and fourth generations, young photographers who have more recently left TaiK, are expanding and truly being given the chance to invent themselves conceptually under the tutelage of a number of first- and second-generation artists. The Helsinki School, the group’s first exhibition in the United States, opens at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in March 2010, and features work by three generations: the second generation represented by and Pertti Kekarainen, Ola Kolehmainen, the third by Niko Luoma, and the fourth by Joonas Ahlava, Hannu Karjalainen, Anni Leppälä and Susanna Majuri.

Kolehmainen and Kekarainen, who both consider minimalist space in their works, represent the second-generation artists included in the exhibition. One of the most well-known photographers from the school, Kolehmainen’s architectural compositions encourages viewer interaction through their dimensions and construction. Aberrations of space, surface and reflections, at times evoking Bauhaus, are presented on a grand scale, often in Diasec format. The quality of the surface reflects the viewer on or into the space, something that is at times jarring considering the size of the work. Kekarainen, a professor at the university, also creates largescale pieces in his Tila series. The images consist mostly of interior spaces precisely framed with random blots of colour, suggesting sunspots, breaking up the symmetry of grids and shadows. The only third-generation artist included in the exhibition, Niko Luoma also explores consonance of composition in his constructed images. Luoma’s studio-made photographs can easily be mistaken for geometric abstract drawings from afar. In his Symmetrium series, he places chromatic lines so they intercept and overlap at various degrees creating optical dilemmas that remain harmonious.

Four artists who circumvent the more visually linear themes of their predecessors represent the fourth generation. Joonas Ahlava, however, manages to maintain a minimal aesthetic in his portraiture. The artist’s repetitive series Outer Limits harks back to Ad Reinhardt, where form and space are almost fused. Short meditation, as with the works of the painter, yields a presence, in this case, a flat and featureless human form. The images instigate a consideration of existence over identity.

Hannu Karjalainen, who was named Finland’s Young Artist of the Year in 2009, creates uncanny images appear orderly until the paint dripping from the clothes of his subjects becomes evident. The works seem to question their own state of dissolution; proof of impermanence and decay has been frozen in a seemingly concrete state.

Anni Leppälä is Finnish Young Artist of the Year, this time for 2010. Leppälä’s oeuvre consists of small-scale works: landscapes, portraits and scenarios. The photographs’ use of body gesture recalls the work of Francesca Woodman in her time at the MacDowell Colony, and seem to intimate something akin to the surreal surroundings of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Leppälä captures an anxious nostalgia of blurred, hidden faces and details. Similarly, Susanna Majuri obscures her narratives with water. Aqua tones wash over what could be live panoramas from children’s books, or perhaps capricious film stills. Women swim over landscapes as if soaring miles above tiny villages, while others converse with polar bears on glaciers.

The diverse nature of the works from the Helsinki School verifies a tradition of industrious deliberation in education, allowing room for diversion as well as concentrated discipline. So, perhaps as Socrates did for Plato, and he for Aristotle, it seems possible to continue a tradition of being encouraged to reflect upon one another’s approaches while expanding one’s own identity and conceptual nature. The generations yet to come may well join a heritage of the unexpected.