This exhibition by visual artist Ilkka Väätti (born 1955) of Tampere presents his most recent work from the years 2017–2020. Consisting of over thirty paintings and two ‘architectons’, Hommage, is based on his interpretation of works by the best-known artists in the history of modern art and other less noted names. The paintings serving as examples represent geometric abstractionism from the period 1906–1940.

Ilkka Väätti began his career as an artist in the late 1970s and his works have been on show in dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. He is a painter and printmaker who also constructs architectons. For Väätti, the latter are works influenced by architecture that combine painting and sculptural expression. Väätti is also known as a researcher and a pedagogue in the visual arts.

In his artistic expression, Ilkka Väätti operates between abstraction and freely reduced figurative motifs. His works are mostly executed in strong basic colours. Although they are abstract, they all find starting points in the history of art. Väätti’s Mundus series, on which he has worked since 1993 is based on his artistic reinterpretations of the masters of art history and practitioners. On the other hand, Hommage, the original idea of which emerged in the early 2000s. is based on new interpretations of modernist works of art.