OH DE LAVAL
Uncensored at Unit London
Oh de Laval is quickly becoming a big name in the art world, and her sultry paintings depicting the absurd and the pleasures of human interactions will soon be on everyone’s radar if they’re not already. Her new show Wild Things Happen in Stillness at Unit London is her debut solo exhibition and runs through April 23, 2021.
Born Olga Pothipirom in Warsaw in 1990, she is half Thai and half Polish, living and working in Manchester and London. She primarily works on medium and oversized canvases. Her work’s primary focus is human behavior and the pursuit of pleasure, which she captures in fun and highly erotic figurative compositions influenced by film noir and the French new wave cinema. Her work doesn’t fit into any particular style or movement, as she chooses to just let human joy, pleasure, and the absurd take over in her colorful and cartoonish paintings. Her exploration of the human experience involves everything from personal decisions to desires and emotions. Her art is committed to her self-professed manifesto. She believes that “the painter should have an inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life;” “they should explore old artists’ way of living rather than studying their way of painting,” and the artist “should never ask for feedback on an unfinished painting, other opinions will affect the work and they will end up trying to please others.” She considers Francis Bacon’s hedonistic view of life one of the biggest influences in her work and, although her early work is much darker, she now depicts sex and sexual scenes in a playful, silly way. She has stated in the past that “I’m not calling myself an artist, I’m a painter. I’m the only one who knows which one of my paintings is art and which one isn’t […] It’s art for me.”
Like many young creatives today, Pothipirom has successfully utilized social media to grow her platform and build her community. But as we well know, the depiction of erotic scenes and nudes (predominantly female) unfortunately may come with censorship. During the lockdown, she was contacted by singer Kali Uchis, who wanted her to create the artwork for her new EP, To Feel Alive. Inspired by her first album, Por Vida, the painting the artist created depicts a blonde version of Uchis pleasuring a dark-haired Uchis in a luxury apartment, while the London Eye is seen burning through the window. The painter and singer soon learned, though, that the cover was censored on Spotify, with the two human bodies wholly blurred out. Her online presence has grown exponentially during the pandemic, and another impressive collaboration, in December 2020, was with Gucci when the brand commissioned her to create two paintings depicting the G-Timeless watch within her painterly world.
Wild Things Happen in Stillness showcases work that reflects the artist’s ribald imagination that continually challenges all expectations. Oh de Laval’s platform will only continue to grow, so a visit to this fantastic show will be a significant first step into her world.
