Darkman Poster 2020

Curator: This striking 2020 poster by Robert Sammelin really grabs the eye. There's a clear reference to the film "Darkman", a Universal Release starring Liam Neeson. What's your immediate impression? Editor: Raw and unsettling. The palette of sickly greens and burning oranges feels visceral, almost chemically distressed. You can almost feel the gritty texture coming off it! I find myself drawn to the question of why these particular colors? Curator: The garish color palette certainly amps up the emotional stakes. Think about it: lurid color in classic comic-book aesthetics heightens the anxiety, hinting at the Darkman's fractured psyche. It is the monstrous born out of modern myth. Editor: Interesting point about modern myth-making! But I'm looking at the production itself. The medium is a poster: designed for mass consumption, meant to be pasted up and quickly seen, therefore printed maybe offset. How many were produced? Were they wheat-pasted? Digital production means an infinitely reproducible artifact too. It's not some hand-painted canvas! Curator: Well, and yet the graphic style echoes earlier modes, even older villain types! Darkman's bandages suggest bandaged mummies and outlaws; disfigured antiheroes are perennial figures. Even in 2020, there is a conscious return to a potent, readily understandable symbolism. A potent symbolic package! Editor: Symbolic packages only have meaning when circulated to the masses, and made materially available. That bright and arresting comic-style makes it effective, of course. Its value stems not from within the artist, or even some potent shared history, but the simple logic of access! Distribution determines worth! Curator: Distribution helps, naturally, but the resonance of that distribution relies, at least partly, on those old archetypes and inherited stories, isn’t that also the truth? Either way, Sammelin really creates something visually striking. Editor: Precisely. That clash between mass produced image, filmic production value and myth-building: these tension and convergences of cultural work in the making are always telling.