Anssi Kasitonni: Below Zero Finnish Art Award 2025 at Serlachius
Anssi Kasitonni's 'Below Zero Finnish Art Award' exhibition opens at Serlachius Headquarters in Mänttä, Finland.
In 2025, Anssi Kasitonni won the fourth Below Zero Finnish Art Award. Below Zero is a UK-based contemporary art award for Finnish and Finland-based artists who are emerging on the international art scene, organised by Beaconsfield Gallery, Serlachius and the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.
During his London residency, which was part of the award, Kasitonni delved into the history of the Beaconsfield Gallery and discovered its past as a charitable institution and school for local poor children. He found something else: an old graphic print depicting the grand pediment that once crowned the portico of a demolished part of the school.
Kasitonni decided to recreate the pediment as a large sculpture to be erected in the gallery. As the old image of the pediment lacked detail, he recreated its motifs, creatively coming up with ideas and freely developing his own sketches. The work takes its name Gentle Means and Easy Tasks from Shakespeare’s Othello – the lines with which the writer seeks to provide guidance for successful pedagogy.
The artist himself understood that his creative method adapted a kind of Chinese Whispers idea. One idea led to another, soon to a third and then to a fourth. The completed sculpture eventually featured, among other things, an elephant, a car, a cat that mysteriously disappeared from the gallery, a button, a peacock, and a yellow submarine, inspired by The Beatles’ song.
The pediment work, modelled on the pediment of a London school, will be erected at Serlachius Headquarters in Mänttä – just a few dozen metres from where, in the late 1860s, the factory owner G.A. Serlachius himself opened his own school aimed at educating Mänttä factory workers. In this way, London pedagogy shakes hands with Mänttä school history.
The exhibition continues in the interior of the Serlachius Headquarters. It comprises mainly the Anssi Kasitonni oeuvre from recent years: paintings, sculptures and films.
Anssi Kasitonni’s exhibition is co-curated by David Crawforth, Naomi Siderfin, Pauli Sivonen and Tarja Väätänen.
Anssi Kasitonni: Below Zero Finnish Art Award 2025 at Serlachius Headquarters 21.03.2026—30.08.2026
Below Zero Finnish Art Award
Below Zero is a UK-based contemporary art award for Finnish artists and artists residing in Finland who are emerging on the international art scene, organised by Beaconsfield Gallery, Serlachius and the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, supported by the Mirisch & Lebenheim Charitable Foundation.
The award includes a mentored residency and exhibition at Beaconsfield Gallery in London, followed by a subsequent exhibition of the commission at Serlachius in Mänttä, Finland. The first Below Zero award residency took place in 2018.
People behind the project
Anssi Kasitonni
Anssi Kasitonni is an artist and inventor, whose works draw from the fringes of popular culture, of a world of skateboarders and moped boys partly gone by. Anssi was awarded the prestigious Ars Fennica art prize in 2011, and he was the recipient of the Below Zero art award in London in 2025.