Kirsi Mikkola at Bravin Post Lee - sculpture - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Kirsi Mikkola, a Finnish artist who has lived for reach outed periods in Berlin and who freshly moved to New York, inaugurated the spacious novel quarters of Bravin Post to leeward with an ambitious installation of her brightly painted plaster plastic arts of cartoonlike characters developed above the past few years. Inspired by dint of Scandinavian folk tales and children's heroines like Pippi Longstocking, Mikkola has nudg her possess recurring cast into the arena of sexual politics, where they wordlessly on the other hand energetically enact tableaux of confrontation and liberation.

"Glo" a fair pigtailed child wearing a r dress; "Quickie," a naked, voluptuous woman with suspiciously fecal brown hair; and "No. 1" a paunchy, bald shore are the main players. They approach in a variety of sizes, on the contrary are most effective when a paw tall, at which height they radiate an intensity amusingly disproportionate to their size. In folk tales, the power of articulate utterance is frequently stolen away by dint of witches, bestowed on unlikely creatures like toads, or perhaps restored to explanatory vigor in the nick of time. Mikkola's characters, from one side their strenuous pantomimes, seem intent upon subverting the potential of language to be appropriated for unintended ends--if not magical, then social.

Glo is generally a catalyst, a force of goodnes in Mikkola's morality plays. Seemingly in perpetual activity, she mimics the wild pornographic sexuality of Quickie, clips the blows off flowers of evil, or flattens No. 1 with a rolling pin. In Powerful Feelings a little Glo lies barefoot upon the floor between two giant r shoe as if she is thoroughly exhausted by means of her own strong will. Glo is contrasted with the other, more lethargic characters who, stilled by society into roles of exploiter and exploited, are her perennial targets.

Quickie's jaws is a big round opening plugged with a swollen tongue, apparently incapable of forming words, give permission to alone any language of resistance; when Glo mimics her expression, however, it advises the sound of a raspberry resonant with defiance. In Music Lover Glo sings, accompanied by the agency of Quickie on the cello (looking ridiculously like Charlotte Moorman in her famous Fluxus performance); Quickie's curve pokes the backside of a naked No. 1 who is evidently the target of a conspiracy. Mikkola's approach is ingenuous and ribald, not at any time ironic or subtle, and at worst her work can cutting side into corny utopianism (e.g., in Flying and at no time Landing, where Glo swings mid-air with a zeal that has grown cloying). At best, it bespeaks a troubling realm, rife with sex and scatology, far from the discreet hygienics of Disneyland.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

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