Kristopher Karklin
t gets a lot easier for an artist to find nude models once he has a back catalogue.
“In the early going it was really difficult because I didn’t have a portfolio of work that people could look back on and make the decision as to whether I was crass or class,” Kristopher Karklin says.
At this stage in the 34-year-old’s career, the decision is an easy one. It’s true that the nude figures in “Home” (on display at the Art Gallery of Alberta) grab viewers’ attention, but they are also critical to the work’s commentary on how an entire generation is finding home ownership to be a difficult, if not dubious, proposition.
Karklin grew up in Fort McMurray and worked in the camps north of the city, where he “experienced the oil economy and the benefits of it.” Since relocating to Calgary to study at the Alberta College of Art + Design, he’s witnessed how the economy’s decline affected people his age and younger. They were told “to succeed, they needed to buy a place and start a family,” he says, adding that this “idea was turned on its head when the money was no longer available.”
The viewer might be fooled into thinking “Home” was shot in some suburban locale. But, like his previous work (some of which Elton John added to his art collection), the background and the human figures are photographed separately and then combined into a single image.
“The contrast between the model-esque part of the image, and the very, very organic feeling of the human models… creates a bizarre scenario,” he says.
The whole effect is surreal—sort of like taking the shirt off your back to pay the mortgage.