HELGI THORSSON
25 Oct 2008 - 04 Feb 2009
HELGI THORSSON
"The Male Model"
Helgi Thorsson is known in the Netherlands for his usually metres-high sculptures that look like extraterrestrial creatures and which literally exhale enormous clouds of steam through a hole in the back or let their disco-ball eyes roll creakingly in their sockets. Music can be heard playing within the man-sized sculptures or the artist might give a concert with his bands 'Stilluppsteypa' and 'Evil Madness'. All his exhibitions burst with energy and come visually apart at the seams by means of moving projections, electronic pianos, talking dolls, turning tombolas.
Helgi Thorsson's exhibition 'The Male Model' centres on the cliché image of man. He doesn't analyse society, nor is there any critique of male behaviour in general. There is just an unstoppable stream of paintings, sculptures, multiples, drawings, video projections representing men. What do men do, who are men, Helgi Thorsson seems to be asking in the way he represents men. He draws and paints what he encounters in the media or what occurs to him in his fantasy: 'man'.
The exhibition features an enormous canvas painted in black and white, in which a gang of apes looks the viewer straight in the eye - as though they have been caught having a party in the jungle. The rest of the gallery space contains mostly portraits and figures of men. The conspiculous figure of a woman in a short skirt and red boots stands pontifically. She is holding a paintbrush in her hand, from which black paint drips to the ground. Is she the one who is in charge, instead of the artist? A large group of beavers with bared incisors and wearing lamp shades are looking silently and without moving at an African man who is in the meantime holding a press conference behind a battery of microphones.
In the rear space Helgi Thorsson has made a time machine that literally makes the viewer dizzy in a psychedelic manner by means of a video. The projection shows a rotating spiral that, after a few minutes, gives the viewer an undulating afterimage. When you walk back to the first part of the exhibition everything starts to undulate and swell. The start of a new and different way of looking at the world perhaps?
Helgi Thorsson received the Stipendium of the Berlage Fonds 2002, and in the same year the Gerrit Rietveld Prize. He won the AIAS Competition for his contribution to the AIAS exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, in 2002. In September 2008 he received the Children's Choice Award for his 'Schwarzenegger Beaver'.
"The Male Model"
Helgi Thorsson is known in the Netherlands for his usually metres-high sculptures that look like extraterrestrial creatures and which literally exhale enormous clouds of steam through a hole in the back or let their disco-ball eyes roll creakingly in their sockets. Music can be heard playing within the man-sized sculptures or the artist might give a concert with his bands 'Stilluppsteypa' and 'Evil Madness'. All his exhibitions burst with energy and come visually apart at the seams by means of moving projections, electronic pianos, talking dolls, turning tombolas.
Helgi Thorsson's exhibition 'The Male Model' centres on the cliché image of man. He doesn't analyse society, nor is there any critique of male behaviour in general. There is just an unstoppable stream of paintings, sculptures, multiples, drawings, video projections representing men. What do men do, who are men, Helgi Thorsson seems to be asking in the way he represents men. He draws and paints what he encounters in the media or what occurs to him in his fantasy: 'man'.
The exhibition features an enormous canvas painted in black and white, in which a gang of apes looks the viewer straight in the eye - as though they have been caught having a party in the jungle. The rest of the gallery space contains mostly portraits and figures of men. The conspiculous figure of a woman in a short skirt and red boots stands pontifically. She is holding a paintbrush in her hand, from which black paint drips to the ground. Is she the one who is in charge, instead of the artist? A large group of beavers with bared incisors and wearing lamp shades are looking silently and without moving at an African man who is in the meantime holding a press conference behind a battery of microphones.
In the rear space Helgi Thorsson has made a time machine that literally makes the viewer dizzy in a psychedelic manner by means of a video. The projection shows a rotating spiral that, after a few minutes, gives the viewer an undulating afterimage. When you walk back to the first part of the exhibition everything starts to undulate and swell. The start of a new and different way of looking at the world perhaps?
Helgi Thorsson received the Stipendium of the Berlage Fonds 2002, and in the same year the Gerrit Rietveld Prize. He won the AIAS Competition for his contribution to the AIAS exhibition in Seoul, South Korea, in 2002. In September 2008 he received the Children's Choice Award for his 'Schwarzenegger Beaver'.