London Knees

What if there was a giant Runeberg cake standing in the middle of the Esplanade park, instead of the statue? Is it possible for a national monument to be humorous? Yes, would no doubt be the reply of Claes Oldenburg, the Swedish--American artist, who presented the idea of a new kind of monument for our national poet when visiting Finland in 1970.

Oldenburg may well be the most playful of the representatives of American pop art: his art turns trivial into festive, small into big, hard into soft – or vice versa. Giant objects and soft sculptures have been his trademark since the 1960s.

Yet we are not dealing with mere visual jokes here. Surprising transitions in scale and material shake and renew the concept of art, public art in particular.

Monumentality is also the underlying idea in London Knees, in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Oldenburg first drew the colossal single knee for a monument in the Thames Estuary in 1966. The theme was put into concrete form later the same year, as the London Knees multiple (series of identical works): now the knee was complemented by another knee, plus a sturdy storage box serving as a base. The box also includes drawings of the planned monument.
The above is a quote from the presentation of Claes Oldenburg on the Kiasma website. The work is on display in the recently reorganised second floor section London Knees and Other Pop Art, which is part of the Popcorn and Politics exhibition.

New acquisitions

Our Popcorn and Politics collection exhibition has been supplemented with new works. The works on display in the second floor London Knees and Other Pop Art section are drawn from the Kiasma collections. In addition to contributing to the themes of Popcorn and Politics, the new additions are a good example of the museum’s acquisition policy, including topical Finnish and international works, as well as works that fill in gaps in the collections, whether they be related to art history or an individual artist. One of the most recent examples is Ulrika Ferm, the Young Artist of the Year 2002, who presents her topical Berlin themes. Ferm takes photographs from human marks in urban milieus and brings them into a new context, the gallery. The borderline of high and low has changed: freely and impudently, artists take their pick of the image flow of real environments and incorporate them into their art, bending them to serve their own artistic objectives