7.8. – 30.8.2026

Welcome to the exhibition opening on Thursday, August 6, from 5–7 pm!

The Association of Finnish Sculptors’ Duo Exhibition is a tradition that brings together two artists at different stages of their careers. This time, the selected artists, Denise Ziegler and Joni Kärkkäinen, use different paths in their practice but arrive at similar forms and perceptions. The similarity of their practices is evident in the seemingly mundane forms and the anti-monumental nature of their works. Often made from recycled materials, these “functional sculptures” and drawings challenge the assumption that sculpture is about sublime immortalisation. In this exhibition, art is not separate from the world, nor are the works separate from one another. They engage in a dialogue within the space, involving the visitor, who is compelled to re-examine their sensory perceptions.

Although the artists’ starting points differ, Ziegler’s process typically begins with an idea and an observation, while Kärkkäinen’s work is material-driven, the sculptors in this exhibition are united by an approach that results not only in the artworks themselves but also in spatial observations, narratives, and experiences. An artwork is not merely an end result—an object in the exhibition space—but a process, a constantly emerging, willful entity. Materials have their own existence and character even beyond art, and the process does not end with the exhibition. The sculptures become landmarks along the way, opportunities to pause and be enchanted. Personal and shared histories intersect in familiar objects. The woodpeckers tapping the insides of the walls knock cracks in the surfaces’ presumed integrity, and Mecki the Hedgehog, in its ragged clothes, continues on its way regardless of whether its background is familiar to the viewer or whether a completely new story emerges around it.

Like the hedgehog on its journey, these unruly objects refuse to remain still as mere objects of gaze. Instead, they challenge the viewer to contemplate on their relationship with the space and the object-entities and creatures placed within it. A centipede is a centipede, but it is also an obstacle on a mini-golf course. A furniture is a furniture, but it is also a sculpture that breaks down the distinctions between art and everyday objects, between design and crafts. Common everyday objects control the way how the bodies are arranged in the space and adapt to the layout of the furniture, but a table with oars presents a new, thrilling thought for both mind and body. Behind the controlled form and precise work of the pieces hides the uncontrollability and disruption of life. Using humor and sincerity as their tools, the works offer spaces for practicing uncertainty. Sculpting transforms the material, the works change with the situations, the exhibition transforms the space, and the experience transforms the viewer. When the floor suddenly gives way beneath one’s feet, one’s thoughts must also adapt. Uncertainty, usually perceived as a threat, becomes a circumstance that fuels curiosity.

Anna Jensen
DA, curator, researcher

Denise Ziegler, DFA (b. 1965), is a visual artist and researcher of public space currently working as a senior university lecturer at Transdisciplinary Art Studies (TAITE) unit at Aalto University.  Ziegler’s practice includes assemblages, installation, sculptures, drawings, paintings, videos, literary-visual works and writing. In a post-Beuysian vein, an artist workshop is extended to public space to work with its mechanisms and possibilities.

Joni Kärkkäinen (b. 1988) works on the edge of the expanded field of sculpture where found materials, hand-driven processes and shifting material languages converge into a single porous practice. His practice is grounded in a slow attentiveness to materials profoundly shaped as much by resistance as by transformation. Kärkkäinen’s craft becomes a form of listening, and making way of tracing the temporal layers embedded in each substance he engages with. For Kärkkäinen, art is not about representation, but rather about perception – a means of sensing the multiple registers of existence, both tangible and unseen. Kärkkäinen’s world unfolds at the edge where folklore vernacular craft traditions, and the aesthetics of the digital age somehow begin to blur.

Joni Kärkkäinen graduated from the Academy of fine arts Helsinki in 2022. He is originally from Outokumpu, and lives and works in Helsinki.