Kiwa
Plastic Surgery: Before. From the Series The Kings of Pop
| Artist: | Kiwa (1975 - ) |
| Title: | Plastic Surgery: Before. From the Series The Kings of Pop |
| Date: | 1996 |
| Technique: Material: |
oil paint textile, plaster |
| Height (cm): | 44.0 |
| Width (cm): | 23.5 |
| Depth (cm): | 25.0 |
| Description: | The series of fictitious painted gypsum portraits was shown in the exhibition Lollipop Fiction (1996) with Esta Frosch and Tõnis Aaliste in the Obu Gallery, Tartu. Undoubtedly the strongest trump for this generation of artists that came into the field during the second wave of Estonian Neo Pop Art, is the fact that the references in their work did not stem from Pop Art but from every day popular culture: parties, brands, clothing, poses, and consumer habits. Therefore they addressed the audience in a totally different way and also had subcultures involved. House music albums, DJ's, three stripes of Adidas and some stripes of Speed, synthetic taste and The Face magazine are the background Kiwa used to create his samples. These works are memorabilia that were created as by-products of his life-style, consisted of a series of portraits, realized with expressive carelessness, of people the viewer thought s/he could recognise in the crowd at an opening party. All characters are “labelled" with their own stereotypical story so that they become everyone and again no-one. The text under one of the “portraits" reads: “Eerik likes to go to dance parties, but in real life, everything does not run as smoothly as in song lyrics. This is where it becomes intriguing..." These works do not seem to refer to “Elvis is the King of Pop" but some loser from the side-street. The King of Pop is a consumer: there is no fascination. Hanno Soans |
| Related categories: | Contemporary Art |
| Copyright notice: | Art Museum of Estonia |
| AME collection: | Sculpture collection |
| Collection number: | S 1717 |
| Accretion number: | EKM j 47305 |
| File info: |
Source type: digital photography File type: TIF File size: 45.34MB Resolution: 3247*4878px @ 300dpi |
