Maarit Murka art science
MAARIT MURKA installation „0,43” in ArtDepoo and videos in SooSoo Gallery
Maarit Murka has inspired the work of Robert Rauschenberg „Deleted drawing of De Kooning”. This must precisely be called work, as together with Willem de Krooning she chose a picture in mixed media and it took a month long work, until the paper was more-or-less clean. As also Rauschenberg Maarit Murka started with the deleting of her own work. She decided to do it in eating method, as the artist has to live from art. Series of paintings and videos „0.43“, that are available for visitors in ArtDepoo and SooSoo gallery, was first premiered in Helsinki Korjamo gallery three months ago. Additionally have come paintings of breathalysers and video „Kiss“.
Maarit Murka has a tendency to think far ahead. For example when she is no longer able to read the street signs without glasses, she thinks of going blind. And being a teetotaller, she is afraid of being drunk. While eating her own painting she is afraid of getting poisoned and later goes to see doctor and gives a blood test. Were the nuclear physicists, who built the nuclear bomb afraid of a mass destruction weapon or were they just curious? Either way, the idea of deleting a picture lead Murka to an idea of what would happen to a picture when she would turn off her senses one by one. The first painting – a self-portrait painted in home studio is a standard painting, painted in a usual way. This was followed by experiments: she painted with her nose closed, ears plugged, even in the dark. Though, the last experiment should be done again, as a couple of works were done before it and the memory of the hand started to compensate for the limited vision. So, picture by picture, Maarit Murka put all her senses to test in a creative process. Although such a goal was not set, she proved that people sense the world and create art as a physical and mental whole. If you influence one part, the entire result changes. A piece of art has been done with the goal to find „what do artists have, that we „normal“ people don’t have?“, as the text besides the painting explained. Something along the lines of a 6th sense? Spiritual?
Art science offers much more possibilities than does conventional dry scientific science. A dangerously non-scientific result was received by Maarit Murka by suppressing the sense of balance and also all other senses by using alcohol, so that the breathalyser showed 0,43. In this painting we can’t see the gloominess that is so characteristic of Murka, she is smiling through an impressionistic mist, as much as impressionism can be possible in a black-and-white painting. Is it that for Murka the breathalyser is also a mentalyser? As already told, as a snack she used one of her paintings, when she licked the oil paint off a freshly painted canvas. The movement of the tongue gives the painting texture like the petals of a chrysanthemum. Video shows the process itself. Maarit Murka also has companions of taste, for example Ani K. from the Republic of Thailand has painted Mahatma Ghandi on a cross and Osama bin Laden in a cave by sticking his tongue in paint, the video is also visible on YouTube. When googleing paint licking you can only get to pages about safety and porn - maybe Murka is the first in the world to do something like that. If you ask two people to shake hands for five minutes, then usually they estimate the time to be longer, but exchanging kisses always takes less time. Maybe one of the kissers had eaten garlic and the other licked paint. And as we already mentioned exchanges, then we cannot leave unmentioned the exchange auction held in Tamm gallery, curate by Maarit Murka. This is an auction where pictures are not bought and sold for money but exchanged with each other. Why can’t a piece of art be measured by a TV? Politicians offer themselves on advertisement posts, carrying signs „exchange“. An elementary demand for every science is finding the right equivalent.
Andri Ksenofontov
journalist