Tykylevits – The absurd video artist from Finland
With the rise of user-friendly 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 to play. For most it turns out that it does not work as “art”.
But others truly discover their true voice through video, even after years immersed in a different discipline.
Such is the case with the wacky 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 on 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 away from the kitchen table, revealing a world of strange art and lifestyle. It was perfect for visual capture through the medium of video.
From the funky art sculpted farm to Finland itself, the set pieces were there. The extreme change in the environment; beautiful, bitter Finnish winters, warm, relaxing Finnish summers, and the costume changes and Tykylevits antics that reflect both (from long underwear runs in the snow to brief bikini play in the summer swamps).
Add 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 represent other than through video.
Her video art speaks of the feminist struggles of labeling (Suomalainen sisu-kas nainen, 2007, seen more than 240,000 times), the man as a lonely cold 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 either drives the spanker into submission or dulls him into awareness.
Prolific absurdist video artists 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 1,000 videos. These archaic and nostalgic media, like alternative film screenings, art galleries and festivals, can’t keep up, don’t know where to start, what to do or how to represent the powerhouses that have emerged online in the last decade (for Therefore, it is much easier to do a retrospective of already defined works by 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 luckily, Tykylevits’ absurd video art has stood out above the rest, and his effective voice for expression churns out new pieces almost daily.