16 October – 15 November 2026

Hippolyte Studio

I keep suitable food leftovers. (We’ve already talked about the spider web.) Dirty plates stacked in the sink no longer seem quite as dirty. But a fallen plant leaf can lie on the table longer than a mandarin peel. I don’t mind that. It can even be aesthetically interesting, a chance fragment that changes shape over the course of days. The same leaf, better arranged.

I push the Vaseline slightly to the left. It feels cold against my fingertip. I push a little more and repeat, until the stain is no longer a stain but a pattern on the smooth surface. If only I could, I would spread everything I can see from my window evenly across the landscape.

Antti Jussila’s Tender Buttons is a kind of home. Its order emerges through small shifts, repetition and things that have temporarily found their place. A home is held together through maintenance: surfaces are wiped, objects are moved, food is prepared and its remains cleared away. Something is constantly accumulating again. Running alongside Jussila’s work are Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), in which everyday objects, food, rooms and their surfaces refuse to remain merely the backdrop to events.

In Jussila’s small-scale assemblages, repeated patterns and overlapping window frames are interwoven with plaster, textiles and everyday materials. Vaseline, glitter and food remains have adhered to smooth picture surfaces; elsewhere, small objects and materials are embedded in plaster, while clean textiles come into contact with those that have become soiled. A spider’s web woven from copper wire extends into a corner of the exhibition space.

The objects of the home come with functions and assumptions about what should be kept, washed, repaired, used up or thrown away. Yet a dried leaf may remain on the table, a greasy mark may become an ornament, and plaster intended as an intermediary material may be allowed to remain as it is. Dirt, food remains and used textiles are signs that something has been in contact with the body. They contain warmth, moisture, grease, wear and gradual decay. The same things can provoke both a desire to touch and a desire to retreat. The pattern becomes denser; something appears to be growing within the surface or trying to emerge from it.

Antti Jussila (b. 1979) is an artist based in Helsinki. He works across sculpture, moving image, sound and performance, both independently and collectively. His work brings visuality, materiality and language together, allowing meanings to accumulate in layers. His practice repeatedly examines systems and the interdependencies between them, alongside speculative fiction, the liminal zones of consciousness and aesthetic dead ends. Jussila is currently studying for a Master of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki, specialising in sculpture. Over the years, his work has been presented at venues including Turku Art Museum, HAM Gallery, CCA Derry-Londonderry, the International Film Festival Rotterdam and 1646 in The Hague.

The artists’ work has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike).