6.3.–29.3.2026, Hippolyte Studio

I wait all night for the gig to begin. I reach out my hand from the front row. I cannot take my eyes off him. I see only a dim side profile and realise that I am looking at someone already dead, a ghost singing at his own funeral. I stare into the blackened eyes until they come alive again.

Dream blurs into reality, desire into longing, and I into him.

Sylvester Kivelä’s exhibition I’ll cross the river to meet you explores the ecstasy of fandom, the loss of an idol, the eroticism and decay of the body, and the ways in which death eludes the photographic image. The exhibition’s title refers to ancient beliefs of the river as a liminal boundary between this world and the afterlife.

The exhibition is inspired by the artist’s own idol, the singer Atsushi Sakurai. Kivelä’s photographic works are composed of true and imagined memories of admiration and longing, gathered over the years. In the Fool self-portrait series, the artist portrays his idol — a way of identifying with him and experiencing a sense of closeness. The serigraph works presented in the exhibition have been adapted and printed from images and videos published of the idol.

In his works, Kivelä portrays the relationship between fan and idol, in which love and grief are one-sided. The idol is an ideal onto which meanings and desires are projected. In gazing at this ideal, the fan does not know whether they desire the idol or want to become them. When admiration turns into yearning, the fan mourns a stranger who once felt intimately close.

I stare at my living hands dying with the stream.
そうさ流れのままに死んでいく様に生きるこの手眺めてる
– from a song Schiz•o 幻想 by BUCK-TICK

Sylvester Kivelä (b. 1997) works with photography, video, sound, and text. His practice explores corporeality and haunting, alongside the fragility and eroticism of the body. Kivelä’s works have been presented in solo exhibitions at Galleria Huuto (Helsinki), Galleria Rajatila (Tampere), and B-Galleria (Turku), as well as in group exhibitions at HAM and Amos Rex. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Turku Arts Academy in 2021.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Atsushi Sakurai.