Artist’s Statement

Pentti Hänninen: A walk around the loop. Graphics. Gallery Regina, (Linnankatu 1) until 27.5.

The 70th anniversary exhibition of graphic artist Pentti Hänninen at Gallery Regina starts from nature. Hänninen, who lives in Kurikka and teaches printmaking, is known for his images of lakes, rocks, reeds and birch trees in the distance, alongside the traces left by wind, rain and snow on the landscape.

Hänninen usually juxtaposes or depicts the above in relation to human life, and most of the time the prints are small-scale and precise in detail. An essential part of the compositions is the natural combination of different drawing styles and the creation of shadows and depth effects through varying tonal surfaces.

However, Hännis, who uses a variety of gravure techniques in his work, cannot be called a landscape realist, as he almost invariably populates his landscapes with unreal figures. They are usually humanised or personified stones, time-worn pieces of wood or living plants, to which the artist gives the keys of soul and storyteller. The titles of the works, such as Woolly Cloud Spinner , Lumituulia or Roadkeeper, give direct clues to reading and understanding the images.

The humanisation of nature seems to run as a theme through the graphic artist's production from the 1980s to the present day. Similarly, some central motifs, such as rocks, are recurrent and often appear alone.

The perception of nature conveyed by the works derives from the Romantic garden of ideas. In contrast to the Newtonian, mechanistic and dominating conception of nature, Romanticism explained nature as a living, growing and boundless phenomenon that could not be controlled by man in any way. In Pentti Hänninen's prints, the line not only articulates natural events, it also takes the form of a silent mental landscape.

Iina Antinluoma