[ art & design ] Yrjo Edelman

In today’s over populated digital landscape of mass imagery, there is often a fundamental disconnect between what are eyes see and what translates mentally. Contemporary artist Yrjo Edelman straddles this psychological territory with his hyper-realist oil paintings, forcing his audience to stop, contemplate and question the current visual state of things.

“Parcels” is still a body of work that depicts haphazardly wrapped gifts, those whose modern chiaroscuro of poetic light and darkness through paper crumples offers a kind of imperfect charm of it’s own. The audience is encouraged to find beauty in the realism of the works; that the importance is a gift, not the wrapping (but that when glance upon with the right eye, the wrapping, as self-aware as Elderman paints it, too is a thing to behold). The works are not photographs but in fact unbelievably realistic oil paintings of Elderman’s composition of poorly wrapped parcels, tied loosely with twine or masking tape.

Eldermans paintings capture every bit of imperfection immaculately with rips, wrinkles and crumples included in this 1976 body of internationally travelled work. Elderman challenges both what we perceive to be fantasy and reality, but actually is.

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