SAMPSA PIRTOLA
The Greatest of All Secrets
May 16-June 7, 2026
The Greatest of All Secrets is a solo exhibition of Sampsa Pirtola, a Finnish video and multimedia artist from Helsinki currently based in New York for a multi-year curatorial and artistic residency at Lightforms Art Center. He received his MFA from Uniarts Helsinki: The Academy of Fine Arts. He works with fictive documentary, video collage and abstract video art.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
Sat, May 16 at 6pm: Exhibition opening
Fri, May 29 at 7pm: Artist talk with Sampsa Pirtola
On view in the exhibition is Pirtola’s abstract experimental video work, Salaisuuksista Suurin [The Greatest of All Secrets], a mysterious and allegorical narrative that tells the story of a young magician encountering an old magician—one imprisoned for life, the other free. Through this encounter, the film unfolds as a mythological journey across cultures whose traditions are built upon an immense lie. In the end, the greatest trick of all is revealed.
Accompanied by a richly atmospheric score by Aino Peltomaa and Harmony of the Spheres from Finland, the work weaves together breathtaking abstract imagery and symbolic storytelling. Pirtola’s striking experimental video sequences guide the viewer through shifting states of perception, where narrative dissolves into ritual, memory, and illusion.
In Sampsa Pirtola’s video practice, he considers how perception is shaped through mediation. His work asks whether seeing through the camera can move beyond documentation into deeper forms of awareness—where image, memory, and myth converge. He reflects on a contemporary condition in which nearly every human being is a potential videographer through widely accessible phone technologies. Pirtola asks whether this accelerating stream of video truly allows us to see, or whether it produces a new kind of blindness. From the Latin videre—“to see”—video becomes both a medium and a question: can it lead us toward something lasting and profound, and after looking through a viewfinder, can we see the world more clearly?
Sampsa Pirtola also engages with the idea of the “Total Artwork” (Gesamtkunstwerk) as articulated by Wassily Kandinsky and extended through the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, as well as the expanded concept of art developed by Joseph Beuys and Fluxus, where art is understood as a fundamental human capacity rather than a specialized discipline.
This exhibition is curated by Sampsa Pirtola and Zoï Doehrer, and presented in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner Library (www.rudolfsteinerlibrary.org). This exhibition is open Thur–Sun, 1–5pm.