Henna Vainio

Biography

Henna Vainio (b. 1981, Finland) lives and works in San Francisco. Vainio earned her MFA from Slade School of Fine Art, UCL in London and her BFA from Chelsea College of Arts in London. She has had solo exhibitions at Ratio 3, San Francisco, Outpost, Norwich, UK; Capital, San Francisco; and Pracownia Potretu, Lodz, Poland. In August, 2019 Vainio presented Hardstep, a solo exhibition of new sculptural work at Josh Lilley Gallery, London.

Vainio's primary medium is pigmented plaster from which she builds lean freestanding statues cast from molds of corrugated cardboard sheeting, and wall-hanging slabs cast from squashed towels and other pliant textiles. Along with plaster, she uses glass to fuse together layers of gesture, shape, and opacity of heated and cooled forms, embedding them with components of everyday materials.