> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Riikka Anttonen Turns the Spinning Top Into a Machine for Metamorphosis - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne/ - Published: 2026-09-15T02:31:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-16T10:18:09.000Z - Description: Read our independent review of Riikka Anttonen's Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, with spinning-top sculptures turning Ovid's Metamorphoses into marble mosaic. - Author: Catapult Submissions Team - Tags: Exhibition, Helsinki, Myth & Folklore, Material & Sculpture ## Sinne Presents Vertere by Riikka Anttonen in Helsinki [**Sinne** ](https://proartibus.fi/?ref=catapult-platform.art)presents *Vertere*, curated by [**Markus Åström**](https://www.instagram.com/markus.astrom?ref=catapult-platform.art), through October 18. A spinning top only balances while it is moving. The instant it stops, it falls, and the object underneath the motion turns out to have been leaning the whole time. ![catapult contemporary art platform exhibiton submission Riikka Anttonen, at sinne ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-installation-02-1.webp) ****Riikka Anttonen,** Vertere, installation view with street window, Sinne, Helsinki, 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. A new body of sculpture in Helsinki takes that instability as its starting point, not as a flaw to correct but as the condition worth building around. **Vertere** **Artist:** Riikka Anttonen **Exhibition:** Vertere **Venue:** [ Sinne ](https://proartibus.fi/en/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **City:** Helsinki, Finland **Dates:** 4 September 2026 – 18 October 2026 **Hours:** Tuesday–Sunday 12–17 **Address:** Iso Roobertinkatu 16, 00120 Helsinki **Curator:** Markus Åström **Photography:** Ahmed Alalousi **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy the artist and Sinne Scale changes what a toy is for. Blown up to the height of a person, lacquered white and set with hand-cut marble, the same shape stops reading as a plaything and starts reading as an argument about balance itself, about what a body has to keep doing to stay upright. None of the five objects on the gallery floor are spinning. They are caught leaning, tilted, mid-fall, as if someone had stopped the one moment the whole design depends on. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Two large spinning-top sculptures crossed in an X shape on the gallery floor.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-installation-03.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-work-fluunt.webp) Vertitur and Novantur *,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen,** 2026, installation view, Sinne, Helsinki. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. + **Fluut*, marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, Riikka Anttonen, 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Aalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-installation-04.webp) migrare and fluut**,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen**, 2026, installation view, Sinne, Helsinki. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. **Sinne** sits on Iso Roobertinkatu, a shopping street in central Helsinki, in one of two spaces the Pro Artibus Foundation runs for contemporary art. Its street-facing windows put the gallery in constant view of the block outside: a clothing rack, a passer-by, a tree, all visible behind the sculptures in the installation photographs. Anttonen has not raised any of the five works onto a plinth. They sit directly on the grey floor, crossed over each other in places, closer to how a top comes to rest than to how a sculpture is usually displayed. > A thing that keeps turning is never finished becoming something else. It only has to stay in motion long enough to keep the question open. Fluut carries the clearest formal argument. Its disc is split down the middle into two marble mosaic profiles, one in warm cream stone and one in cool grey, meeting exactly where the painted wooden axis pierces the surface. The two faces do not turn away from each other so much as share a spine, an axis that would run straight into both of them if the piece were still upright and turning. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Spinning-top sculpture leaning against a column, its disc showing a cream marble mosaic face with closed eyes.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-work-novantur.webp) **Novantur*, marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen**, 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Overhead view of a spinning-top sculpture with a marble mosaic figure caught mid-fall across its disc.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-work-vertitur.webp) **Vertitur,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen,** 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Spinning-top sculpture with a leaping animal figure rendered in grey and cream marble mosaic along its rim.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-work-migrare.webp) **Migrare,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen**, 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. Vertitur takes the same disc and puts a body on it instead of a face. Seen from above, a grey-stone figure spans the surface limb over limb, closer to a sketch of a fall than a portrait of one, its outline dissolving into the surrounding cream tesserae rather than staying inside a fixed border. The pose reads as caught between positions, neither landed nor still airborne. Migrare moves the image to the rim. A leaping animal in grey and cream marble wraps around the disc's edge rather than sitting flat on its face, so the shape only completes itself as a viewer walks around the sculpture. Formatur and Novantur extend the same vocabulary in cooler registers, one built from a repeating clover-shaped relief, the other reduced to a pair of closed, heavy-lidded eyes. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. White spinning-top sculpture with a raised clover-shaped relief pattern circling its disc.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-work-formatur.webp) **Formatur,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen,** 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. Anttonen's own framing draws the sculptures back to Ovid's Metamorphoses and to the marble culture of ancient Rome, where queer and trans life was visible in ways contemporary norms often assume are recent. The curatorial text names this directly: covering the surface, letting only part of an identity show through, as a working method rather than a metaphor applied afterward. That argument lands differently now, in a cultural moment that keeps treating queerness as a modern invention rather than a documented, recurring fact of the historical record. A toy built to fall over and right itself again is not a subtle way to make that point, but it does not need to be. It just needs to keep tipping. ![catapult contemporary - Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Macro detail of hand-cut marble tesserae forming swirling grey and cream patterns.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-detail-fluunt.webp) **Close up of Fluut*, marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, **Riikka Anttonen,** 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. ![Exhibition review of Riikka Anttonen: Vertere at Sinne, Helsinki, 2026. Macro detail of marble mosaic tesserae in beige and grey forming a curved figure outline.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/09/riikka-anttonen-vertere-sinne-helsinki-2026-detail-vertitur-1.webp) **Close up of Vertitur,* marble, grout, painted wood and MDF, ****Riikka Anttonen**, 2026\. Photo: Ahmed Alalousi. Courtesy the artist and Sinne. The five sculptures in *Vertere* hold the unstable point between movement and rest. That is not a failure of the object. It is the only moment a spinning top ever shows you what it actually looks like. --- **About the Artist** **Riikka Anttonen** Riikka Anttonen (b. 1982) is a sculptor based in Helsinki. She holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki (2023) and an MFA from Aalto University's School of Arts, Design and Architecture (2012), and her work has recently been shown at Galería Yusto/Giner in Marbella, Bærum Kunsthall in Fornebu, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Kai Art Center in Tallinn and Forum Box in Helsinki. She is currently included in a group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and received a Paulo Foundation artist's grant in 2025. [Website](https://www.riikkaanttonen.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) · [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/riikka%5Fanttonen?ref=catapult-platform.art) --- **About the Location** **Sinne, Helsinki** Sinne is one of two exhibition spaces run by the Pro Artibus Foundation, alongside Gallery Elverket in Ekenäs, and supports contemporary artistic practice through a rotating exhibition programme in central Helsinki. [Website](https://proartibus.fi/en/?ref=catapult-platform.art) · [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/sinnegalleri?ref=catapult-platform.art) --- **About the Curator** **Markus Åström** Markus Åström curated Vertere and wrote the accompanying exhibition text, situating Anttonen's sculptures within Ovid's Metamorphoses and the visual culture of ancient Rome. [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/markus.astrom?ref=catapult-platform.art) [Artist in Focus](https://www.catapult-platform.art/artist-in-focus/) ## Does Dimitris Gketsis Sculpt Mythology or Does Mythology Sculpt Him? 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