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Tense human figures are suspended in space in painter Ville Löppönen’s works. The intensity of the poses and expressions instantly captures the viewer, who is startled by the demonised details. The popularised horror genre, which stems from subcultures, is stripped of its robes of harmless entertainment and harnessed to serve Löppönen’s apocalyptic worldview in which the corporal body and mind engage in battle on the arenas of superficiality and spirituality. The harbinger of his works is often a willpower-radiating figure, the artist’s self-portrait. He fluctuates between the incarnations of an angel and a demon. They both collide in man.
Löppönen’s way of narrating and language of expression are reminiscent of many great master painters from Dali to El Grego, but a modern viewer also recognises the superhuman monsters and heroes of comics in his figures. However, the paintings are void of the fantastic lightness of the world of comics, despite the abundance of empty monochrome space to contrast the enchantingly skilfully painted figures. That, too, is loaded to the brim with Löppönen’s message: it is as if damnation and light were embodied in these works.
The artist is worried about conspicuous consumption, perfectionism and a lack of spirit, all of which we fall prey to so easily today. The problem is not the times as such but the fact that we are willing to fool ourselves. It is much easier to look only at one’s surface than to face what is inside. We are imperfect as humans and we don’t always know what is right and what is wrong. That is why we have to dare to look at ourselves. Here lies the sensitiveness and humanity of even the fierce works.
Löppönen’s art is largely about processing the artist’s thoughts and self, but his motive is to awaken and challenge the viewer. Yet he doesn’t moralise but examines the possibility of combining western values and spirituality, their limits and inner contradictions. Löppönen’s visual worlds draw the veil off of our eyes and show us something that fluctuates in the no-man’s-land of our outer and inner worlds. In his images he strips man of the armour has built for himself and takes us on a trip to humanity. If we direct our eyes inwards, we encounter questions about the values we choose carry with us, how we live our lives, is there anything inside us or do we only construct a shell in our ideals and selves. Löppönen immerses his viewers in these questions.
Pilvi Kalhama
Published in:
Ville Löppönen
Author: Pilvi Kalhama
Graphic Design: Liisa Seppo
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary Publications A 002 | 2008
Vammalan kirjapaino, 2008
ISBN 978 952 67020 1 8
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary