Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

(c/o mal) Many of you have already seen CT and Goddam's infamous and much-distributed “penis plugs” picture. Well, apparently so has Finish modern “artist” Jukka Korkeila who's just painted a copy of it and signed his own name on it, titling the painting “Red shift” and presumably trying to sell it for some typically enormous amount of money.

Now, normally I wouldn't care, but here's what's written about that painting in the gallery's brochure monograph on the show (which uses this photo as its coverpiece):

Luckily, Korkeila does not quote or appropriate. His semi-fictional paintings "are neither parallel, nor, consequently, autonomous from, the actual world. In fact they militate against such autonomy, precisely quoting the way Baroque art militated for an enfolded, entrapped relationship with the real world.

As you can see from the above animation, Jukka Korkeila does not only quote and appropriate, but pretty directly rips off other people's artwork. Jukka, if you're going to steal other people's ideas, there's nothing wrong with that — in fact much of art's history is built around it — but at least have the courage and strength of character to admit when you're doing it so blatantly. Yes, I know that it's also written that you “borrow” and “out of this diverse assortment of signs [you] meticulously build a whole, defamiliarising the content”, but there's a world of difference between inserting a fragment of an idea into your art, and wholesale copying of an entire piece.

Update: I've just been shown even more artwork that Jukka Korkeila appears to have stolen from BME and is claiming as his own. What a loser. If you're going to do this, I'm sure people would be flattered if you just asked… But just doing it without asking and then taking credit for other people's creativity is really lame:

I guess there are more people who want to be artists than actually have the talent for it.

Update #2: Hello boing boing readers (thanks Cory).