Shannon Oksanen: Soft Summerlanding
Shannon Oksanen Summerland 2008 Production still
The poster image for Shannon Oksanen’s new exhibition “Summerland” shows her painting of army-era Elvis, black guitar in hand, next to a phonograph. He looks like he is listening, but maybe he’s just daydreaming. In a few years, out of one uniform and into many others, he’ll be dancing and singing with Ann-Margret in the film Viva Las Vegas. For her show, Oksanen remakes this film in 35mm, focusing on the happy abandon of its water-skiing sequence. The painstaking recreation of 1960s fluff and fun isolates a moment of cultural change, of an innocence that in memory now seems as soft as the features on Elvis’s face in Oksanen’s painting.
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Shannon Oksanen Summerland 2008 Production still |
In her descriptive text for the exhibition, curator Jenifer Papararo writes, “The image of Elvis becomes not just the symbol of the pop star but also a signal for a perfect ‘then’ in the not so good ‘now.’” The combination makes for another interesting step in Oksanen’s progress as an artist increasingly capable of retrieving the dream life of a consumer society that is now passing into history. (555 Nelson St, Vancouver BC)
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Shannon Oksanen Summerland 2008 Production still |
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