Karoliina Hellberg’s Milan exhibition asks what a painting can suggest when no one is shown at all
Finnish artist Karoliina Hellberg (b. 1987) has brought five new paintings to “No Hay Banda,” the group exhibition co-presented by Elizabeth Xi Bauer and Conceptual Fine Arts in Milan, where it remains on view through July 3, 2026. The works continue a practice that treats interiors, gardens, and domestic traces as stand-ins for human presence, building narrative without relying on direct figuration.
Hellberg describes her paintings as vessels for storytelling. Rather than depicting people outright, she implies them through rooms, houses, plants, and small disturbances: water spilling from a fallen glass, a bouquet placed on a nightstand, an overgrown garden that feels less passive than charged with action. In her account, even “doing nothing” can become a narrative event.
That sense of layered meaning is central to her method. Hellberg says she works in a collage-like way, moving between personal symbols, external references, and a search for something more objective. She rarely sketches in advance, preferring to let one visual decision lead to the next. The result is painting that feels assembled through association, with each element carrying its own emotional and formal weight.
Nature appears throughout her work, but usually as something shaped by human intention. Gardens, plants, and other natural forms are often tied to architecture or domestic space, suggesting care, control, and memory rather than untouched landscape. Hellberg also keeps a wide-ranging studio library, including nonfiction titles on parrots, spiders, Scottish gardens, and Sophie Jansson’s Tre öar: Mamma, pappa och jag (2025).
Among the references behind the Milan paintings are a phrase from curator Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), a film whose unstable atmosphere seems to echo Hellberg’s own interest in ambiguity and psychological undertow.
The exhibition arrives as Hellberg’s profile continues to widen. She recently joined Elizabeth Xi Bauer, which now co-represents her with Galerie Anhava. Her first solo show with Elizabeth Xi Bauer was “Labyrinth” in 2024. Since 2017, she has also worked with Raimo Saarinen and Tero Kuitunen on three group exhibitions staged in architecturally significant settings: a villa designed by Alvar Aalto in Kotka, Amos Rex Museum in Helsinki in 2021, and Maison Louis Carré near Paris last year.
Her work has also reached a major museum audience. In 2025, Hellberg participated in Nordic Noir at the British Museum, curated by Jennifer Ramkalawon, and her work “A walled garden at night” (2023) was acquired for the museum’s permanent collection.
What makes Hellberg’s paintings linger is their refusal to close down interpretation. They offer atmosphere, structure, and a sense of lived-in space, then leave the viewer to complete the story.
