The collection exhibition Rock, Paper, Scissors explores the diverse meanings and techniques of contemporary-art materials from the 1970s to the present. This lavish exhibition provides keys for understanding numerous phenomena in the art of recent decades.

The range of materials used in contemporary art has grown to be almost infinite, making the choice of material and ways of working with it central to the content of artworks. This is the starting point for the Rock, Paper, Scissors exhibition, which delves into many of the fundamental questions in contemporary art: Why does contemporary art look the way it does? What do the choices of material tell us? What kind of material are sounds – or thoughts – for an artist? The exhibition also raises questions of authorship and contemplates modes of perception.

The museum’s job is to preserve artworks for future generations. What are we to do if the material in an artwork is fragile or intended only for one-time use? The exhibition has a room where visitors can hear conservators’ views on the artworks and find out more about the materials used in many of the works on display by touching them.

The exhibition, put together from the Finnish National Gallery’s collections, features works by 52 artists. It includes pieces by Finnish contemporary-art pioneers and interesting artists of the younger generation as well as by classic figures in international contemporary art.