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!