Brad Pitt makes his debut as a sculptor on display in Finland

Brad Pitt debuted as a sculptor, in a group exhibition at Sara Hilden Art Museum in Tampere, Finland.

The actor’s artwork appears alongside the musician’s Nick Cave and the artist Thomas Houseago for the exhibition “We”, on view until January 15, 2023.

Among Pitt’s nine works on display are a house-shaped structure molded from clear silicone with bullet holes, and his first sculpture, from 2017, “House A Go Go”: an 18-inch miniature house made of bark. tree, roughly held together with duct tape.

The largest pieces include a coffin-sized bronze box depicting hands, feet, and faces trying to break through the structure at various angles, and the 2020 plaster sculpture “Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time.” , which depicts a shootout between eight figures.

The “Bullet Train” star reportedly started making ceramic art after his turbulent divorce from actress Angelina Jolie in 2017.

In an e-mailed statement to The Art Newspaper, Pitt said of his artistic turn: “For me, it’s about self-reflection… It was born out of ownership of what I call the ‘radical inventory of the self.’ And getting really brutally honest with myself and taking into account the ones I may have hurt and the times I’ve been wrong.”

Meanwhile, Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave (not to be confused with the American visual and performance artist of the same name) is also making his artistic debut: he showcases “glazed ceramic figurines depicting the life of Satan in 17 seasons, from innocence to through experience in the confrontation of our mortality,” according to a press release.

“The Devil: A Life” is Cave’s first major body of visual work. It includes 17 individual pieces ranging from 6 to 19.5 inches tall, each handcrafted, painted and enamelled by Cave in England between 2020 and 2022. Aesthetically, the series nods to the artist’s interest in Victorian Staffordshire figurines. Flatback, of which he is a collector.

Both budding sculptors created these works in dialogue with the considerably more experienced Houseago. The British artist has been practicing for nearly three decades and showed work at the Whitney Biennial in 2010.

In Tampere, Houseago, who is best known as a sculptor, shows a series of paintings, a medium he has begun to experiment with in recent years. The works come from his large-scale “Visions” series which was done outdoors and was inspired by European Symbolists including Norwegian Edvard Munch. He also shows new sculptures made of redwood and plaster that he made in response to works in the Sara Hildén Foundation’s collection, such as Alberto Giacometti’s “Woman in a Carriage” sculpture from 1943 to 1962.
Speaking of his decision to stage a collaborative show between himself, Cave and Pitt, Houseago said in the press release: “I am not a me. I am a WE!”