< PERISCOPE GALLERY, STOCKHOLM >
Stig Johansson of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet wrote in his review of the 1990 exhibition:
"There is a compelling magic and radiance in the four objects in the gallery, which is due to their varied materials and forms but also their unity and logic. They take each other with them and move the language along a longitudinal axis in a dialogue with the next object. The first object the viewer encounters is a sculpted granite column, uneven, coarse, a sturdy piece of Finnish bedrock, like a national exclamation mark against other works with a more international character, in which most noteably American Minimalism can be sensed.
Siren has in close cooperation with the stone-cutters skillfully and precisely followed the innate structure of granite as if peeling out the core of the force of the flowing magma - a piece of rock mass and energy, released, restrained, as a glimpse from a distant geological era. The effect of this rough-hewn monumental block is singular - one feels that one is inside a sculptural creation, something beneath the raw surface receives an almost classical posture, or why not the unbridled force of Michelangelo's slave bodies. Behind this force of nature are two thin, sliced plane objects, closely attached to the floor plane: the one is light, its coloured concrete slightly shimmering, the other in black, weighted in Finnish granite, related with our fashionable material diabase. Both are treated and polished to the highest degree - a refinement and feel for the material's own colour, which is so typical for Finnish art, also in its more applied forms, in architecture and crafts.
Finally, In this very aesthetical quartet with its well considered proportions is Olemus [Gestalt] in shiny stainless steel; two metal surfaces angled against one another in discreet space. One gets the feeling of a high-tech product manifested by impeccable mathematical thinking. It is perhaps this that makes Olemus something obvious and exemplarily beautiful. In Hannu Siren's art craftsman individuality and technology meet, in the intersection a poet who in the displacement of surfaces and volumes creates rooms for visual adventures. " (Stig Johansson, Svenska Dagbladet, 10.2.1990)