English
For years, images are reproducible and reproduced in countless contexts, media and environments. You can buy everything from coffee mugs imprinted with the face of your dog to murals that are replicas of whatever historical picture you want. This phenomenon is reflected in the rise of sample based music (which uses the sonic reproduction) and in literature, with the rise of the blog, whose content often reproduces what has already been published.
In Europe, Finland has been a great leader in the digital revolution, so we should not be surprised that the art scene has followed a cutting edge path. With new technologies, the division between natural and artificial or real and virtual has become increasingly blurred. Just think of two everyday examples, Photoshop and cosmetic surgery. When it was invented, photography astonished people for its ability to capture scenes from real life, and do it easily. Now we are amazed by pictures for their ability to deceive, and create truly credible create worlds of fantasy and surrealism. Cosmetic surgery is also changing our concept of what is natural and real in the context of the human body.
Taking these trends as inspiration, the exhibition Virtually REAL –
Painters of the Internet Generation (Virtually real: Painters of the Internet Generation), will run from June 9 through Aug. 29 in the Meilahti Museum of Art in Helsinki. The focus of the exhibition is realism, or rather the hyper-realism. Young painters such as Markku Laakso or Ville Löppönen create reflections of the real world where “real” is, in terms of technique, but not necessarily its subject. Reflected in their paintings are elements of the fantastic world created through Photoshop and AfterEffects, where current and historical characters mix along with examples of the super-hero bodies that result from surgery or hormone treatments, which are increasingly common. Take advantage of this opportunity to cross the blurred boundary between real and virtual in art, and rent apartments in Helsinki to be able to rest and relax in a real home afterwards!
