C'mon, BimboScupture

It's not easy to get any words out of Boris Hoppek. He is usually very succinct and more often quiet as a mouse. But, he speaks loudly and in volumes through his art work. His range of hooligan style coarse creatures represented by his sculptures gained great popularity when they appeared in the advertisements of Opel cars. Those were his 'Bimbosculpture', re-baptised 'C'mon!'. He saw no reason that these rag-doll creatures had to be innocently sexless, like all dolls in the market; so his creation had penis or vaginas. This German artist who has made his home in Barcelona for several years, continues to break waves and tabu, and his new exhibition in Barcelona, in the Iguapop Gallery testify to that. It's titled 'Fragil' (fragile), with the exhibits open to all interpretations, according to the taste and individual understanding of art by each art consumer. In this particular occasion, the format is rather diverse, from photography to water colour as well as sculpture. With feminine sexuality once again the more prominent reference. When asked why he was so interested in the sex theme, he thought about it for literally a couple of minutes, before he answered: "Because I am heterosexual.". That's that, followed by absolute silence. Most art work in 'Fragil' figures female in all forms, in photographs, drawings, paintings and sculpture, with their sexuality as the key element. To this ex graffiti artist, he minds not the criticism that he is out to provoke, which he denied, and considers it okay because those who criticise had actually come specially to view his work and had stopped to reflect on it. Some of his art pieces are figures of black people, which had also provoked sentences referring to him being a racist. He retorted that racist would have ignored the blacks, not showed them off in art forms. He also emphasised that his work is totally opposed to publicity or market value, in which everything is neutral because they don't want to offend anybody. While he is realist and wants to show the world and the people in it as they are. . The nude was title 'Crisis 2009', the significance of which totally escapes and baffles me. The other, titled 'The mirror of the coffin' reflects, I suppose, the new and modern Barcelona while underneath it, the old Barcelona, invisible, still continues. It's more than likely I am entirely off the mark of course. However hard I tried, I failed to understand neither the artist nor his art. But that's my problem, not his.

Tags: bimbosculpture, barcelona

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