This February Finnish artist  Jani Leinonen turns the over 500 year old barn Stalla Madulain in Switzerland, into a breath-taking chapel of light and offers the viewers almost a transcendental experience. The art pilgrims of the world have a new destination in Switzerland as Jani Leinonen’s Chapel of Remorse plugs into the same pious energies of art sanctums such as Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin in Blanton Museum, Olafur Eliasson’s Rainbow Panorama in Aarhus and Rothko Chapel in Houston. Leinonen has harnessed the barn’s old features, the arched windows, the cathedral-like hight, and in collaboration with the worlds best glass blowers in Munich, converts the space into a dramatic yet …

Jani Leinonen’s beggar sign installation Anything Helps is included in the exhibition Far From Home – the last exhibition in a trilogy based on the ARoS museum’s collection. The trilogy is intended to present alternative ideas as to how a museum can showcase and talk about relevant themes from our times through text, format, orchestration, and juxtaposition of works. The first exhibition, Out of the Darkness, 2014, thematised the structure and power of the great narratives, addressing the global challenges facing humanity. The second exhibition, No Man is an Island – The Satanic Verses, 2016, used the forceful political, economic, and cultural changes which Europe underwent at the time …

Jani Leinonen is taking part in the exhibition The Comedy of Being – Art and Humour from Antiquity until Today at Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland running through September 23, 2018 to January 6, 2019. The Kunsthaus Zug is giving its visitors seven-league boots and sending them off through the history of humour in art. An in-house working group has spent the last six years collaborating with students and scholars to research the relationship between art and humour, going back to Ancient Greece, taking a detour through the Middle Ages to the Reformation, and on to the wealth of material on the topic composed in the last century …

Jani Leinonen is represented in the exhibition Upside Down at Kuopio Art Museum, presenting contemporary art from the Saastamoinen Foundation’s Collectiondating from 2010 onwards. The soon 50 years old Saastamoinen Foundation’s art collection has grown from a home collection of the Saastamoinen industrial family to one of Finland’s most important art collections with more than 2,600 works from both Finnish and international artists. Upside Down is curated by chairman of the Saastamoinen Foundation Arts Committee Päivi Karttunen and visual artist Anna Tuori. The exhibition has been implemented in cooperation with EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art and is open from September 21 until February …

Jani Leinonen’s widely recognized solo exhibition School of Disobedience will continue from the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma to ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark in March 2016. Leinonen’s exhibition is part of ARoS Focus/New Nordic program and is open from March 19th – June 12th 2016. For more information visit: http://en.aros.dk/exhibitions_/2016/jani-leinonen/

  Jani Leinonen’s latest project Tony is Back! has angered multinational food manufacturer Kellogg’s. Two weeks ago Leinonen anonymously launched his campaign releasing a series of commercial-like videos of Kellogg’s character Tony the Tiger navigating a grown-up world of prostitution, police violence and suicide bombers. Just as in the commercials shown widely on television 30 years ago, the Tony is Back! campaign shows the animated cereal icon helping people solve their problems with a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Kellogg’s was not happy with the unauthorised use of their brand’s advertising mascot and shut down the campaign’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites in just …

Jani Leinonen is included in Arts & Foods. Rituals since 1851, an exhibition curated by Germano Celant, held at the Triennale in Milan from April 9 to November 1, 2015. The exhibition follows the topic of food though its preparation, distribution and sharing, in both the private and public spheres. More than 15 spaces host the exhibition dedicated to the places of food and its representation in paintings, furniture, objects, sculptures, appliances, photographs, menus, books and record covers. More information at: http://www.expo2015.org/en/explore/thematic-areas/art-and-food  

Jani Leinonen’s School of Disobedience – exhibition is now open for the public at the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. The School of Disobedience is not only a real school, but a metaphor for the entire exhibition, which also is a retrospective of Leinonen’s work to date. Visitors are treated as students, receiving lessons from the more than 100 works on view or through workshops that encourage to civil disobedience. To the the school’s workshops Leinonen has invited experienced activists and opinion leaders to teach people how to effectively confront and solve any social problem. The workshops will include, …

  Jani Leinonen is included in world-renowned street artist Banksy’s latest project called “Dismaland Bemusement Park” in Weston-super-Mare, UK. The exhibition opening August 22, 2015 is described as “a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism” and features works by 58 handpicked artists from around the world including a never-before-seen collection of Banksy satirical art and sculpture as well as works by artists such as Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, and Jimmy Cauty. “It’s a showcase for the best artists I could imagine, apart from the two who turned me down.” – Banksy Dismaland is open daily from August 22 to September 27 from 11am – 11pm. …

Hyperallergic wrote about Jani Leinonens upcoming School of Disobedience. http://hyperallergic.com/230374/learn-to-fight-capitalism-at-the-school-of-disobedience/