Gothic Artwork in Spotlight: Grotesque dogs

Today, I am going to present a Norwegian artist, Ole Martin Skaug. He does not have a homepage and he is not easily contacted. I do know, that he is a Bachelor of Arts from California State University, and that he also makes art using photos. To be honest, he is quite a mystery to me, but I'd like to present his marvelous statues. He makes these ceramic grotesque animals and humans, though I prefer the ones that are not so human. Each statue is made individually, so they are all unique. Though Skaug does make the same statue many times, but none are completely identical.

The dogs in the pictures are purchased by my mother. She is the one who introduced me to this fine statues! Luck for me, she said it would be okay to take the pics and post them. She also has a third dog, a hideous and deformed but yet so heartwarmingly cute dog with wings. It hangs from the sealing in the study room of their house. Unfortunately I didn't remember to take a photo of it too.

I really like the expressions they are making, and how the body language gives the illusion the statues have personalities. These were bought from a store in Oslo, NorweyDesigns. Skaug's work is brought there and there is also much more art and desing from all the Scandinavian countries.

Gothic Artwork in Spotlight: the Macabre Lamb

This post is a first in series of posts about artworks that somehow hit the spot of gothic aesthetics inside me. Basically this means I present a statue, an installation, a painting, a book, etc. or an artist whose work made me sigh of admiration. This time I am presenting something macabre, next time it is time for a little doze of grotesque!

So, this short post is about a piece of art I saw this week. I was on a brief trip to Oslo, the capital of Norway, and visited the new facility of Astrup Fearnley Museum. This wonderful museum presents contemporary art, you can read more about their future exhibitions from their website.

Instead of talking about the whole exhibition I saw, I'm just going to concentrate on one artist, Damien Hirst from United Kingdom. Or more precisely to one artwork. I fell in love with the piece (which was actually made of three parts, or should I say tanks). It was made 2007 and the name of it is God Alone Knows. Due to the shape of the room it was shown, I only took a close-up of the middle tank, wanting to demonstrate the reason of my infatuation.

As you can see, the artwork consists of glass, mirror, aluminium, marble, sheep and formaldehyde solution. Also you can probably notice that I am there too, as a reflection. This is why I love it so much, because in a sense it is interactive, the reaction of the viewer changes the way it looks. Think about it, if there were faces of horrified people, staring at the dead creature, or if there were people smiling of admiration, or if among the disgusted people one was smiling, almost laughing. It would make a difference, wouldn't it?

Unfortunately there weren't that much people, so I could not cause any disapproval by making deranged facial expressions.

I warmly recommend to visit the museum God Alone Knows is shown, there were many other creepy installations too!