Juri Markkula

IKB Ground

2023

Balloon Dog is an iconic work within the highly acclaimed Celebration series, which JEFF KOONS began in the mid 1990s. The Celebration artworks reference certain times of year (holidays and birthdays) but also the celebration of the cycle of life. What else could suggest the cheer of children’s parties more eloquently than a colorful balloon, twisted into the instantly recognizable form of a dog. According to the artist, “It is about celebration and childhood and color and simplicity – but it’s also a Trojan horse. It’s a Trojan horse to the whole body of art work.” Balloon Dog has the profoundness of an archaic sculpture. The monumental Balloon Dog sculptures...

Balloon Dog is an iconic work within the highly acclaimed Celebration series, which JEFF KOONS began in the mid 1990s. The Celebration artworks reference certain times of year (holidays and birthdays) but also the celebration of the cycle of life. What else could suggest the cheer of children’s parties more eloquently than a colorful balloon, twisted into the instantly recognizable form of a dog. According to the artist, “It is about celebration and childhood and color and simplicity – but it’s also a Trojan horse. It’s a Trojan horse to the whole body of art work.” Balloon Dog has the profoundness of an archaic sculpture. The monumental Balloon Dog sculptures...

In his recent works sculptor Nicholas Crombach uses the markers of tradition to critique social rituals. Through the employment of the mythology and the rich visual culture of the hunt, Crombach assembles works which revel in contradiction. He has created a series of unexpected juxtapositions that examine the cultural significance and the complex issues percolating around hunting and sporting traditions in the 21st century. For this exhibition, Crombach riffs off the myth of Diana and Actaeon, which provides a poignant framework for his theme. In the original story, Actaeon, the hunter and grandson of King Cadmus, is in the forest with his dogs, when he spies Artemis (Diana) in her bath attended by her nymphs. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, but when the mortal Actaeon sees her, her nymphs try to cover her modesty. She splashes him with water, turning him from a mortal man into a stag, who flees into the forest only to be hunted down and killed by his own dogs. The hunter becomes the hunted. Crombach’s Fetch (2018) refers to the mythology of Diana and Actaeon as he transforms the lofty and classical story of metamorphoses into a game of fetch in the local park, constructed on a grand scale. In Fetch (2018), Crombach creates a hybrid between the art historical imagery from paintings of hounds hunting stags with the flashy colours and synthetic materials of modern day dog chew toys. The sculpture is displayed alongside a variety of chew toys that act as an index for the sculptures interpretation, some transformed into porcelain that has been marked with the aristocratic hunting motifs found on antique English pottery. Here, the assembly of works create a conversation on the blurred boundaries between: histories of domestication, the working relationships we have with animals, contemporary issues of hunting as “play”, tradition and survival. A second major new sculpture “End of the Chase” is a collapsed version of a Victorian period rocking horse housed in London’s V&A Museum Of Childhood. The sculpture responds to the 2014 hunting act that passed in Britain which in turn attempts to obliterate the tradition of hunting with hounds, most commonly associated with the fox hunt...

Reinforced polymer (FV) and acrylic polyurethane. Edition 2 of 9