Jiri Geller is known for his sculptures that involve the imagery of
popular culture. The works are meant to catch the viewer’s attention just
as fast as the new products in the supermarket catch us to consume. The
works look like they’ve been industrially produced but like Jyrki Siukonen
writes in the fresh book on Geller’s body of work (Jiri Geller Selected
Works 1998 – 2008, Kiasma 2008), the artist is the only craftsman and
quality controller in his “factory”. The seemingly very polished works are
born in a long process and they comment the unreal and peculiar glimmer of
the world of popular culture.
Mark Maher MA in art history and cultural antropology writes about Gellers works:
Like an anarchist who has studied every stitch and fold of the
banker’s suit, Jiri Geller models and subverts the iconic forms of
contemporary culture with vengeful precision.
While – not inaccurately – self-defining as “an outsider, a punk
rocker”, Geller is also the rare Finnish artist who has both managed
to stay close to Finnish aesthetic strengths and traditions and also
detonate his own unique brand of post-national, mind-fucker nihilism.
As a Finn, Geller’s work perfectly fits that grey Nordic outpost’s
proud, tragic tradition. His sculptures are elemental and essential,
fascinated with death and violence, critical of the fake and phony,
and ever aware of just how dark the world can be.
But then, rather than being limited by his roots – or in denial of
them, Geller keeps to this impeccable conceptual framework, and takes
it global.
While never repeating himself, Geller targets the same territory again
and again to explore the idea that what in our modern world is deemed
solid, permanent and valuable is in fact melting, suspect, and utterly
transitory.
Geller’s objects offer meaning despite their solidity and materiality.
A pessimistic yet playful – at times quite profound – energy flows
through them: escalators connect one to nowhere; fiberglass tsunamis
promise leisure sport and/or death by flood; ice cream cones sit
frozen in mid-melt next to exquisite skulls that melt and drip like
butterscotch candies in the sun.
It’s rare to see such playfulness and heaviness seamlessly combined in
the same artistic vision: Geller’s balloon fabrications radiate all
the lighthearted joy of portraits of children…who have recently died.
And he has constructed a video game control module possibly intended
to burn you alive.
But if Geller’s all sharp knives, dark jest and nihilist prankster,
what’s with a name linked to that slightly dated globe trotting
charlatan asshole – Uri Geller? Jiri explains:
“Uri is friends with Michael Jackson – that is cool. And both Uri and
I do tricks for a living. I like the way that people get suspicious
when thinking they might be being cheated. Like: `Could this guy’s
name really be Jiri Geller´. Well, they should be suspicious. We’ve
all been cheated big time.”
– Mark Maher, Helsinki Finland, May 2010