Ikarus syndrom

Ikarus Syndrome
Drawing, Ink on paper
300x140 cm
Since birds are highly visible and common animals, humans have had a relationship with them since the dawn of man. Birds have been featured in culture and art since prehistoric times, when they were represented in early cave paintings. The most known figure that comes to ones mind must be Ikarus, the Hero from Greece mythology that flying to high on borrowed wings, crashed and burned.
In 2006 I had an exhibition in Lahti´s Hiihtomuseum, Finland that was situated at the giant downhill ski jumping tracks I found it more than fitting to make a work about this human ambition. Flying is probably mankind’s greatest dream-it is a deep-rooted topic in ancient literature and still fascinates us today. Sigmund Freud described dreams about flying as a natural progression as we grow. First we crawl, then start to walk continue to run -and from a child point of view- it would be natural to expect to fly next. The drawing “Ikarus Syndrome” is a visual study of what is birdlike in man and what is manlike in birds.
The drawing displays a wide variety of comparing studies such as simple human shelters and bird nest architecture, bird skeleton heads and sport helmets, flight formation and synchronized sport disciplines, bird postures and jumping styles, our diverse anatomy and physiology, fossils and iconographical imaginary.
The several hundred ink drawings are partly strong structured but merge towards the middle into a melting pot of transfigurative chaos in which each species intermingles with each other.

Greenaway dish

Greenaway dish
2003
Bouquet of color selected balls in glass bowls

The works name refers to the British film director Peter Greenaway.
The objects are displayed in an almost clinical style namely as specimen’s that grow in Petri dishes, nevertheless the balls colonies seem to overflow in their fruity and fresh appearance. The arrangement made me think of the beautiful food and flower displays as being seen in Peter Greenaway’s movie, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.
The visual hallmark of Greenaway's cinema is the heavy influence of Renaissance painting, and Flemish painting in particular, notably in scenic composition and illumination and the concomitant contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.