Oskar, the Artiste

About the Artist

The late--and much lamented--Oskar was a splendid long haired house cat, who specialized in extended murals. His early works, such as "The Heart of a Salmon" 1999, (on the computer room door), and "Mouse Cry" 2000, (on the side of an antique Biedermeier sideboard), lacked clear vision and tended to rely solely on their adventurous nature for effect. However, following a six month caesura in 2001, he returned to his murals with an energy and fastidiousness which, by defying its own controlled formalism, allowed him to convey the poignancy inherent in his subtle messages of loss and abandonment, underlying the heroic anthem of faith in the return of the She Goddess, so evident in much of his later work.

The Heart of a Salmon

This charming--almost whimsical!--treatment presents a cacophony of icons, drawn from the artist’s vast and ever increasing repertoire of symbols. Appropriating the power of corporate branding and advertising graphic design, and acknowledging the universal legibility of visual modes of communication, the baroque mash-ups result in beautiful collisions which inundate viewers with playful stories that do not clearly convey any specific meanings but are somehow never confusing.

Mouse Cry

The glory of Oskar is in the attention he pays to the details. Every punk-rock song sounds the same to someone who dislikes punk, but to a true punk fan the small differences are the sites of the purest creativity. Like a snowflake, every Oskar piece is one of a kind, its essence contained in the minor variations on the theme. Each work seems machine-made in its plastic perfection; only upon very close inspection do traces of the artist’s claw betray the fact that these are all handmade objects.

The Thorns of Life

The curators can hardly credit it, but it appears that the Neanderthal owners of this evocative and priceless art work have had it PAINTED OVER. This kind of outrageous disregard for one of the iconic works of today's art world fills the curators with indignation. Such vandals would probably use the Mona Lisa as a dart board.

Feather Frontier

Oskar’s best known work, "Feather Frontier", is made up of a irregular, cloudy mass of short vertical rips. The flamboyance and bold physicality of gesture which tended to dominate (and limit) Oskar's earlier works, have been replaced by more delicate and precisely controlled marks which help to add meaning and convey a deeper concern. One of the most moving signals is the wistful move to the horizontal at the far right, where the artist seems to begin a more lyrical passage.