Morten Viskum: Emerging Identities
By Renata Domitran
Morten Viskum (1965), is a Norwegian artist
primarily known for the use of controversial materials and challenging artistic
expressions. His work includes installations, performances, paintings and
photography. Viskum is often accused of creating scandalous works purely for
the sake of publicity. He first hit the headlines with his work Rats/Olives
(1995), where the olives in 20 olive jars were replaced with baby rats. He then
put the jars back on the shelves in 20 grocery stores in different towns
throughout Norway. A series of paintings feature a severed human hand: in The
Hand that never stopped painting (1998) and The New Hand (2008), he
uses a severed human hand as a paintbrush, a sort of everlasting performance in
death.
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Morten Viskum, Rats/Olives, 1995
Courtesy of the artist.
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However, in spite of accusations that he
deliberately provokes and shocks, Viskum continues his form of aesthetic
communication with the audience, and argues that his works are intended to
provoke a reaction to the presence of a general indifference in society. And once the viewer steps away from the
simplicity of the first impression, the surface of seemingly provocative works,
the subtlety and abundance of Viskum's work emerges. One such work is the
ongoing installation series started in 2004, Self-portraits, which
features life-size silicon casts of Viskum's body that he uses to represent
various identities related to a particular context in time. Every year, on his
birthday, he produces a cast of himself, thus expanding the nature of his own
self-definition by adding new identity elements to it.
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| Morten Viskum,
Immortal, 2004 Courtesy of the artist. |
Immortal (2004) portrays Morten Viskum as an artist, but
dressed in the neutrality of a grey suit. The dullness of his appearance evokes
associations with an anonymous bureaucrat more than an artist, disturbing the viewer's
preconceived expectations of the artist's physical appearance. Even though the silicon sculpture
features all of Viskum's physical characteristics, there is a sense of absence,
a slight disconnection between the personal and artistic elements of Viskum,
captured in this artificial representation of both. In this installation, the
figure of the artist faces a white wall where the word IMMORTAL is
written in animal blood. Positioned against the wall is an old organ and an
organist’s stool, evoking the image of a silent Bach symphony at an ongoing
funeral ceremony. On the side wall hangs a vintage phrenology head
illustration, in both front and side view, coated with animal blood. The
illustration shows a diagramme of the brain that in its time was believed to be
accurate, and which therefore serves as a reminder of the inevitability of
change. All these elements allude to the artist's recognition of his own
temporality when faced with the notion of immortality. The use of animal blood
in Viskum's installation connotes a sacredness of life that fades away as the
blood's colour assumes a pale brown tincture. However, by the act of facing the
wall, Viskum confronts his own inevitable impermanence, while at the same time
awakening the potential immortality of his own work.
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Morten Viskum, Imagio
Dei, 2006
Courtesy of the artist.
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Imagio Dei (2006) depicts Viskum as Jesus. Dressed in a
long, light pink robe with a blue shawl, he holds a human skull in one hand and
a shrunken human head in the other. In Latin Imago Dei is a theological
concept found in the book of Genesis 1:27: "God created man in his
own image. . ." which asserts
that all human beings are created in the image of God with inherent equal
value. Viskum uses the same term but purposely misspells it Imagio Dei,
giving a somehow twisted image of God's creation. Since the idea of equality is
far from being widely anchored throughout the world, this image represents a
human desire for that equality. By portraying himself as God's son, Viskum adds
to his identity as an artist a trace of his own human imperfection,
highlighting the illusionary reality of images. Identifying the part of himself
that desires such grandness and pointing to its imperfection, Imagio Dei
is Viskum's way of taking the liberty of creating his version of an image that
emphasises the imperfect realm of human belief.
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Morten Viskum,
The Clown, 2012.
Courtesy of the artist. |
The Clown (2012) is perhaps one of Viskum's most complex
works. It embodies the combined
identities of a clown, Viskum and Norwegian terrorist Anders B. Breivik in a
single representation. The figure is dressed in chequered black and white
trousers and clown shoes; with a pink Lacoste polo shirt and red Lacoste
sweater point directly to Breivik's style of dress. The face is painted like a
clown, but the hair-style and trimmed beard resemble Breivik. A plastic flower in one hand and three
balloons in the other accentuate the elements of the clown, while an old brown
suitcase next to the figure refers to a departure - perhaps the departure of
moral standards. This is a very complex identity fusion, as Viskum combines three
layers of seemingly incompatible elements into one entirety. The fixed features
of the clown convey an underlying sadness. Fusing the recognisable
characteristics of a clown and the terrorist into a grotesque figure carried by
Viskum himself reveals the artist's ability to confront the cruelty of
committed atrocities. Viskum diminishes the face of terror, transforming it
into a face of disturbing sadness, in an acknowledgement of the events caused
by Breivik's loss of human compassion.
All of
Viskum's self-portraits are daring confrontations with the harsh side of
reality and its unfiltered representations: Believe (2003), The
Scientist (2005), Son of Abdullah (2007), The Perfect Sculpture
(2008), No Way (2009), Scarlet (2010), Gaddafi (2011), The
Collector 2013- (2013) and his last self-portrait to date: 1986-2013 An
Artist Collecting Art (2013). Viskum plans to continue the series of
self-portraits as long as circumstances in his life permit; and he wishes to
make a reverse series of self-portraits based on photo documentation, running
from 2004 back to the year of his birth in 1965.
The context of Viskum's life will eventually be
complete with all the different pieces of experienced reality presented through
an exploration of his identity. This fusion of identities evokes Zygmunt
Bauman's thought of liquid modernity transmitted to our identities. In
today's society where everything is rapidly changing, preserving the
definitions of the various forms of our identities is constantly being
challenged. The continuing transformation of the experience of oneself in
different contexts of reality is what Viskum is alluding to, as he is dedicated
to his quest of accepting reality regardless of its degree of unpleasantness.
An instinctual discomfort is a primordial reaction when something provoking and
shocking arises - though it is not Viskum who creates shocking art that insults
and provokes the audience. It is instead the reality of existence that provokes
Viskum. Assured of his own identity, Morten Viskum intentionally confronts the
audience with the less desirable representations of ourselves and the world around us.