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Pop Art Meets The Macabre: `Silent Violence´ And `Collage.´ Oulu City Art Museum, Kasarminti |
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By Edward Dutton
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
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Edward Dutton reviews two recent exhibitions at Oulu Art Gallery.
‘Silent Violence’’s three rooms interpret the same theme in three very different ways. All of the artists seem to be influenced by the Brit-Art, shock phenomenon of a decade ago. In the centre of the first room is a black baby deer crushed under a giant bowl. It’s surrounded by glittering black and white pictures. These simple, ambiguous images are haunting and emotive and one of them really captures the emotional ‘violence’ of an explosion. But you get the impression the artist is trying too hard to be ‘deep’ as in the bizarre centre-piece and Tracy Emin-type writing on the wall. The second room involves ‘violent’ pictures heavily influenced by horror-artist Francis Bacon. Much of the other art is just aping Brit Art, but there are some original mixtures and ideas: Bizarre cartoon and graffiti-art influenced portrayals of violence and fascinating, seemingly Japanese-cartoon influenced 3D representations of cruelty to dogs. The third room is a new take on Damien Hurst’s ‘Cow’ - huge video screens displaying dead animals gradually losing their body heat, as picked up on infra-red cameras.
‘Collage’ is more consistently innovative. There is a satire of ‘Pop Art’ involving pictures of dictators and fanatics, self-portraits done over town maps but most interesting of all is the work of Pauliina Turakka Purhonen who seems to use the Medieval idea of death masks and a naïve style to examine everyday relationships and perhaps mental illness and even demon possession in northern Finland. The figures stare obliquely, as the artist brilliantly portrays anguish and mental and relationship break-down. Her work is disturbing, intensely-thought-provoking and certainly worth viewing. ‘Silent Violence,’ though original in places, is mainly derivative and trying too hard. Many ‘Collage’ artists, however, really have something interesting to say about life in northern Finland and more generally. Most of the artists exhibited were born in the 1970s and are from northern Finland.
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