Joakim Ojanen. Lots of Feelings.

by Elda Oreto

The sculptures and paintings of Joakim Ojanen, humanoid puppets, half man and half things, animals, vegetables, plants, embody the complex dynamics of our emotions, often mixed and contradictory. The universe of Ojanen is a surreal and dreamlike dimension, perhaps even a little disturbing, which however helps to recognize emotions and understand their meaning in the absurd plot of everyday life. Precisely this mixture of ambivalent emotions, both of attraction and repulsion, builds the small autonomous world presented in the exhibition Snake Pit shown at The Hole gallery in New York. The vipers den, that gives the title to the exhibition, was literally drawn on the floor. It reproduced a symbolic and cartoonish intricate labyrinth, to be experienced but in the manner a child would when playing “Hopscotch” on the street. The sculptures, made of ceramic and bronze, the oil paintings and the drawings that the Swedish artist produces, impersonate a series of characters who have a hybrid physiognomy, partially human and partially animal, with elements taken from comics and illustrations, from objects of everyday life and even from the vegetable world. The characters that inhabit Ojanen’s universe all have something in common, even if they keep a strong individuality. In the exhibition The Part You Throw Away on display at the Västerås konstmuseum until 26 September 2021, the he presents a complete review of this rich catalog of characters. In a room of the museum, the crowd of creatures emerges from an indefinite ‘darkness’, surprised and frightened at the same time by this birth.

The sculptures seem to be a variation on the same character: a somewhat naughty child with the head of a dog or another animal, caught in the act of doing different things, many of which are somewhat absurd and mischievous: feeding worms to snakes with a human face; crying and hiding in a bush; or a two-headed dog with his tongue hanging out, his arms dangling and languid eyes. There isn’t a proper story or common thread in what it is represented but things happen, unrelated to each other and connected only by accidental similarities. The only clue or “sense” of what is occurring is shown in the titles of the artworks and exhibitions. As in the Snake Pit from the exhibition at The Hole, for example, or there is also Sunday Boy Deep In The Cup, Can’t Take Another Week Like This, (2019), which is a ceramic sculpture depicting an anthropomorphic dog sitting in a huge cup of coffee; Fuck, What Did I do Last Night? Cancel Everything, Today I Ain’t Doing Shit, (2019) another ceramic character curled up on a carousel made by a two-headed dog. In the painting Pink Night Cat Gazing At Stars – They’re Mighty Fine Tonight!, (2019) there are two fluffy pink cats kissing under the moon. At times the meaning is captured in the title of the exhibitions, like in Second meeting is always a bit tricky, last time was so spontaneous and easy, now there’s all these expectations and I’m not so good with social responsibility, title of the 2016 exhibition at the gallery Ruttkowski;68 in Cologne.

Every creature in Ojanen’s world is a symbol, the snake is the road, the dog is loyalty, the clock is time… and so on. These characters, both in their bidimensional or tridimensional versions, whether they’re paintings, drawings, sculptures, are all dreadfully surreal and at the same time tenderly human. They are so authentic that they come to build an alternative reality to the one in which we live, but not completely detaching themselves from it, but just a tiny bit, like when someone is daydreaming, or wanders in a speech. These small creatures born from visions, seem to sneak into our daily life with an intriguing and at the same time amusing presence. In Ojanen’s figures the edges of the bodies get longer, the eyes and nose become huge rubber trunks. Often these strange creatures are just heads without a torso.  As if the heads could just break off the bodies and walk alone. It is impossible not to think of them as living creatures, their presence touches us. These strange and colorful enities seem to explain how to be “human”, they are the embodiment of our emotions, both sad and happy ones, but expressed in a way that is without filter, without mediation or repression.

The ability to express emotions, whether they are beautiful or ugly, but always freely, without filter or repressions, translates an introspective approach into an aesthetic scheme, requiring an inevitable precondition: loneliness. In the 2020 exhibition A show for the lonely distant baby souls at the Richard Heller gallery in Santa Monica, Ojanen focused on the topic of distance and isolation, displaying a series of characters in a forest / amusement park. And this is precisely the place from which all these colorful characters emerge which are nothing but many self-portraits and images of the artist’s feelings. The presence of Ojanen is evident in the manufacture of the ceramics, which appear almost raw and simple, retaining the imprint of his hand. But here emotions are never released without a reason or a motivation, there is something that holds them together as if they were in a huge net. This hallucinating constellation is the result of influences that come from different horizons, cartoons, illustrations, and graffiti that belong to the artist’s background and to his life. In fact, Ojanen worked in animation and has experience as a graffiti artist before being officially introduced to the world of art. And his background brings him closer to reality, connecting him to the immediate and direct experience of this world.

During his studies at the Konstfack University College of Arts in Stockholm where he earned his Masters in 2014, Ojanen, coming from a graphic design background, began working with ceramics, a material that according to him he felt it was calming. This material is a direct vehicle in which the artist can sink his fingers, can manipulate and express anything. But it is also very simple material and even as with regards to the paintings, the basic and raw elements bring out the childish distinctive note of Ojanen’s language. A little bit like Hayao Miyazaki, according to Ojanen we are all children even as adults and the emotions that run our lives are like spirits with human characteristics that guide us where they want as they wish and are the same for everyone, both big and small. Humor and depression, joy and fear are mixed together. This contest is evident in Ojanen’s drawings, as shown in the exhibition “Drawing Attention” at the Lars Wagner gallery in Stockholm. His drawings have the same exuberance of famous works like Garfield and The Simpsons cartoons and the derisory spirit found in the work of artists such as Peter Saul and Philip Guston. This sometimes melancholic humor gives the drawings a unique singular voice that encourages the viewer to enter the artist’s imaginary world. Each drawing is improvised. The artist has no predetermined idea or agenda on how to end it. A line will lead to another line and a shape will lead to another shape, with the characters and the  creatures that gradually will appear and travel in increasingly surreal ways. Sometimes ears can function as arms, cheeks begin to lengthen and flutter, human lips turn into duck beaks and elongated noses can sprout from their faces by creating a fictional world where everything seems possible. These drawings show all the intuitive and enigmatic aspects of Ojanen’s work. He has also recently started to work with bronze and to produce large sculptures like Rough Day (with Bag Boy) ( 2017), a 2.2 meters high work in which a boy wearing shorts and a large cap is bent and holds a folder. 

Ojanen’s enigmatic and playful artworks thrive on the carefully crafted balance between childish innocence and melancholy, with his ever-growing and diverse cast of multifaceted creatures displaying the full spectrum of complicated human emotions. This work combines the dark colors and lanky limbs of a Giacometti with the artist’s typical cartoon figure and the all too familiar posture of a tired and defeated child. In the sculpture, King cloud never needs to worry, life on top is always sunny (short version) (2020), three figures are carrying a pedestal on which a spider dances with a crown. Like spirits who arbitrarily enter our dimension, Ojanen’s works reveal the most immoral aspect of human emotions. These anthropomorphic and alien creatures are actually “human, all too human” as Nietzsche would say. And confessing their fragility does not mean being carried away by the irrational world of passions but rather following a different logic, dialoguing with oneself, with the dynamics of the depth. In this dialogue with one’s emotions, Ojanen’s works point to a fundamental aspect of human society which is empathy or even compassion, the ability to recognize oneself in the feelings of the other without losing one’s own identity. A possible antidote to loneliness.