30.10. — 22.11.2026

The obvious is sinking towards invisibility. It floats down as flakes ever deeper, as a myriad fall of snow, covering the beneath, as an overlay on the bottom, as a shape-leveling coat. The obvious accumulates, becoming heavier, enveloping within itself all that slumps to the bed repeatedly being made.

Snow falls underwater to the bottom of the sea. The snow is what remains of an algal bloom of the one summer back, which tinted the surface waters to a more greenish turquoise than they were during that spring.

Distracted by pursuit and flight, two cephalopods swim to a deep zone devoid of oxygen. Almost weightless, they sink to the bottom, and are becoming gently covered by snow. Ink sacks become encapsulated, then slowly pressed flat as black prints inside the compressing chalk, as an abyssal fresco.

In the watercolour paintings of Hemmo Siponen at his exhibition Benthoscapes at Forum Box, colour is attached to a calcareous primer. As before. Meanwhile elsewhere, of all that has hit an invisible floor, some formations of colours have a chance to set enclosed in silently lithifying layers of drifts.

Hemmo Siponen (b.1991) is a visual artist from Helsinki. He graduated as a Master of Fine Art from Academy of Fine Arts Uniarts Helsinki in 2019. His main working method is watercolour painting. Most recently Siponen has exhibited works at K17 space for art and ecology in Nikkilä in December 2025. Previously he has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Pleiku, Berlin (2025), and in Helsinki at tm-gallery (2023), Gallery Sinne (2021) and HAM-gallery (2020). In 2022 his works were exhibited in a group exhibition at Schwarz Contemporary in Berlin.

During the year 2026 Siponen’s work at his studio in Helsinki and in artist residencies at Vadso in Norway and at Mazzano Romano in Italy has been kindly supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Finnmark Fylkeskommune and Väinö Tanner Foundation.