With the rise of easy-to-use video technology, many artist crossovers have emerged in the world of video art. Most will randomly loot on video with no rhyme or reason; technology is just a button away and they will play just to play. For most it turns out that it does not work as “art”.
But others really discover their true voice through video, even after years immersed in a different discipline.
Such is the case of the absurdist video artist known by the name of his online channel “Tykylevits”.
Hailing from Finland, and originally known for his art sculptures, Tykylevits appears to have stumbled upon a video by accident a few years ago, while sitting at his kitchen table repeatedly banging his head against a newspaper. His wife recorded the video and after a friend saw it the next day, she was urged to put the article online.
From there, the camera would eventually pull back from the kitchen table, revealing a world of bizarre art and lifestyle. It was perfect for visual capture through the medium of video.
From the funky art sculpted farmhouse to Finland itself, the set pieces were there. The extreme change in the environment; beautiful and bitter Finnish winters, hot and relaxing Finnish summers, and Tykylevits’ costume changes and antics that reflect both (from long underwear runs in the snow to brief bikini games in summer swamps).
Add in a group of women in fishnet stockings posing for the camera, performing absurd actions, and you have an interesting capture of life that would be difficult to depict in any other way than through video.
Her video art talks about the feminist struggles of labeling (Suomalainen sisu-kas nainen, 2007, viewed more than 240,000 times), the man as a cold and lonely potato (Jaakaappi, 2008), the culture and nonsense of smoking (Stop Smoking, 2009), and the absurdity of the fetish, while several videos show women putting on and taking off their stockings in a repetitive manner that drives the flogger into submission or dulls him until he notices.
Prolific video artists of the absurd like Tykylevits are often too powerful for the traditional media of video art or film. By the time this article is read, you will have uploaded over 1000 videos. These archaic and nostalgic media, like alternative film screenings, art galleries and festivals, can’t keep up, they don’t know where to start, what to do or how to represent the powers that have emerged online in the last decade (for Therefore, it is much easier to do a retrospective of already defined works of artists that have already been sealed with labels).
And many times these unlabeled outsiders will also be drowned out by the viral noise of online video. But thankfully, Tykylevits’ absurdist video art has stood out above the rest, and his effective voice for expression produces new pieces almost daily.
