HYLAND
minutes from The Thief. No mere viewing space, this
airy and expansive gallery, is another tribute to survival—
pop artist Hariton Pushwagner's (a pseudonym for Terje
Brofoss) rise to international prominence after years
of homelessness, self-imposed exile, self-destructive
insecurities and drug addiction.
Now Norway's modern-day Edvard Munch, a cult
hero who owns the gallery and became increasingly
popular after a court battle over ownership rights
to his work, Pushwagner
pushes the "envelope" in his
amazingly-detailed, comic-
like Apocalyptic Frieze (seven
paintings) which art critic
Paul Gravett calls, "dizzyingly
intricate, hallucinatory, vertigo
and nausea-inducing and
culminating in a Dante-esque
self-portrait of one head
whose interior is filled with
infinite buildings of human
beings packed like slaves or
sardines."
Despite these stark
images, his raw, graphic assault on contemporary society,
Pushwagner's indebtedness to Keith Haring and Andy
Warhol is also apparent. While his work is provocatively
chaotic and maddening, it's also brightly colorful, wildly
kinetic and an ode to freedom, so there's a uplifting coda
to the artist's life and pieces like Night Life, Honk City,
Pling Plong and Boogie Woogie. In essence, it's Fun and
Hope.
Taking his cues from East Africa, the Massai, Braque
