Hanna Marno
Semianguineus
The sculpture installation Semisanguineus contemplates its material being in the midst of various systems of naturalness and unnaturalness, as a bystander and a participant.
Semisanguineus refers to the colors of the red-gilled webcap (Cortinarius Semisanguineus.) Its half bloodred colours are used as a dye in the wood and plaster sculptures, as to the idea of a sculpture being the maker of life and a vessel.
However, from the perspective of the material sculpture, it’s insignificant whether it’s dead or alive. Or at least as long as either one of these signifiers is considered a definition of some common participation. It just so happens that certain thoughts, gestures, beings, states of being, pseudo-living and pseudo-dead, including symbionts, growth directions and diagnoses, are closer to life and thus with foresight.
Starting points for Semisanguineus were the natural dye and special wood working experiments and processes alongside questions about the interaction between artistic authorship and temporality.
The sound design for the exhibition was composed by Harri Sippola.
Marno’s work has been supported by the Satakunta Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The exhibition has received project funding from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and the Swedish Cultural Foundation Finland.
Thanks to Iikka Hakkio and Vilma Pesonen from Kankaanpää Art School for participating in the process.
Hanna Marno (b. 1981) is a sculptor and environmental artist who works and lives in Siikainen, Northern Satakunta. During the last few years of living in a small village, her diet has consisted of birch dust during breakfast and lunch. After a hard days of work, her dinner is more versatile: a portion of bohemian truffle for the muscles, aspen for the blood and dyeballs so she could see better. For supper she enjoys a cup of rye varnish and graphite porridge, as it provides the night a shelter. Dog ghost Mauri supervises the portions behind his bowl of delicatessen.
In her art, Marno observes landscapes, communities, their materialities and multilingualisms proposing encounters of different environments. Marno’s artistic approach is landscape-based and communal. Her art is presented in galleries and museums in group and solo exhibitions, as well as in various environments as temporary and public works. Her latest solo exhibition was held at the Taidehalli Häme in 2024, and a temporary environmental artwork, Édouard Samettijalka, was presented at the Pori Art Square in the Pori Art Museum’s program in 2024.
www.hannamarno.com
Instagram: hannamarno
Riikka Puronen
Hourglass
The exhibition examines the emergence of form through time and the ways in which material and process make the passage of time visible. In her works, Riikka Puronen reflects on scale, perception, and the formation of form: how mold, material, and movement generate shape together — like the sand in an hourglass slowly accumulating into a visible trace of time.
Traditionally, the mold in sculpture has functioned as a tool intended to reproduce form precisely and ultimately disappear behind the finished work. Yet even before casting, its hollow interior already appears as a three-dimensional form of its own. In the Hourglass exhibition, this latent form of the mold becomes the starting point of the works. In the Clay Tiles series, impressions pressed into clay function as traces of events and movement.
The ceramic works in the exhibition are made using 3D-printed molds. Clay is pressed into the molds and removed while still wet, allowing gravity, drying, and movement to continue shaping the form. The behavior of the material remains visible in the finished work: the clay records both the structure of the mold and the impressions, distortions, and traces of movement created during the working process.
The exhibition also includes small tin sculptures cast from forms derived from the Clay Tiles reliefs. Each casting is unique. The small-scale sculptures resemble amulets or portable objects — personal symbols, memories, and signs. In the Alphabets series, suggestive forms evoke hand gestures and signs, as well as the ways meaning can emerge before spoken language.
Riikka Puronen (b. 1968) is known for the richness of her materials and shifts in scale. In recent years, she has focused particularly on 3D technologies. Puronen graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1996, and since 1992 she has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, in addition to holding twenty solo exhibitions.
Puronen’s public sculpture Compass and Stars was commissioned by the HAM Helsinki Art Museum and completed in Kalasatama, Helsinki, in 2018. She is currently working on the public sculpture Roots of Vitality (Juuret elämänvoima), commissioned by the State Art Commission
for the Tampere Police Station.
Alongside her artistic practice, Puronen worked as a lecturer in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts from 2007 to 2017. She has received the Young Finland Award (1997) and the William Thuring Prize (2010). Her works are included in several collections, including the Finnish State Art Collection, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Collection, and the collections of HAM Helsinki Art Museum.
Puronen is currently working with the support of a three-year artist grant from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
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