MAKE IT RAW Ilmari 'Imppu' Salminen
has used a distinctive style and tongue-in-cheek
humour to create a colourful museum in the heart of
Finland. Erkki Pirtola
visited him.
Excerpt:
… With his pictures of celebrities Imppu is the Andy
Warhol of the backwoods, but his powerful designs bear
a closer resemblance to the symbols of Native Americans
and Aboriginal people, to Buddhist meditation images,
or even to some technical circuit drawings, and connect
the viewer to ultra-reality. The Finnish national epic
Kalevala describes Sampo, the wonderful and inexhaustible
source of treasures that opens up the world of opportunities.
In Imppu's art, the boundless richness of folklore becomes
a modern visual-spatial language - epic 'picture singing'.
The pictures have no frames, and only a piece of string
attached for hanging. Cardboard and the backs of old
flyers are used as mounts for the pictures. Imppu is
well-liked in the community, and local people often
ask him to make drawings from their own pictures. This
really is disposable art, since the magazine pictures
yellow and the ink disappears quickly in the sunlight
unless somehow protected. They are like wonderful butterflies
that flutter for a brief moment in the colourful light.
Prince Charles,
Princess Diana and their sons Princes William and Harry,
1998, 29 x 18.5 ins., 73 x 47 cm. (left); Loordi, 2006,
9 x 17 ins., 23 x 43 cm. (right)