Rating: ***.5
Review: You can tell from his stuff that Swedish artist Jaokim Ojanen takes his work seriously, but that doesn’t mean I have to. I respect his colorful ceramics, the best and most fun of his creations on display; The Hole show, which opened last night and runs until the end of the year, also features— in order of interest— paintings on linen, bronze sculptures, and inconsequential drawings on paper.
In an interview with the curator Katrin Ingelstedt of the Västerås Konstmusuem, where the show originally was hosted, Ojanen said that as a child, he drew, “different cartoons from comic books and TV.” When the exhibition’s intro assured me that the artist is now in his mature period, I balked. While I like some of it on an aesthetic level, I find it hard to believe it is important. Most of the character design, when it comes down to it, looks like it’s been aped from Adventure Time storyboards.
Overall, the presentation is uneven. The bronzes and charcoal drawings zap all of the excitement out of Ojanen’s lexicon while the larger sculptures such as I’ma Try To Free My Mind and Perhaps We Could Do Something Later? are shiny, cheerful, and point to the artist’s most adept feature: his use of colors.