The Bitch Was So Hot Added by featured art

This painting was displayed at Kluuvi Gallery in Helsinki in May 2007 at Rauha Mäkilä's Wanna Be Wannabe exhibition.

This is what art researcher Pilvi Kalhama wrote about the exhibition:

"Aspirations for Success

What would a painting look like, if it were like a catching song: like an airy and melodic pop tune, prepared to please; like a rhythm built on insignificance, designed to imply insubstantiality instead of substance; like a playback show without live feed, where the significance of poses and mannerisms make the listeners forget the demand for musical quality. Rauha Mäkilä (1980) toys with these stereotypical sentiments. The pictorial motif of beautiful and desirable young people evokes empathy. How would it feel like to taste uninhibited self-sufficient fervor, to sway your hips on stage, to be the adored fictional diva of the painting?

Mäkilä depicts a universe characterized by euphoria and inspiration, and her work gives the impression that she has been in a similar mood whilst painting. The ideal of desirability is recurrent. Nevertheless, the pitiable nature pertaining to the superficiality of a culture of exhibitionism can be perceived in Mäkilä's work. Mediocrities remain anonym in the rapid circulation of faces of the new media. The present day fails to initialize its promise of success to the crowd of John and Jane Does who populate MySpace and YouTube, dreaming of careers as singers, DJs, rappers, dancers, and models. In reality, these identical "wannabes" remain only fleeting and forgotten portraits. Personalities emerge rarely. Victorious in the eyes of their beholders, the chosen few leap from the Internet to a short lived life on the pages of the yellow press. The limelight and jet set lifestyle have transmuted into an unsubstantial daydream, which gives illusory meaning to the lives of the milling hordes.

Mäkilä neither jeers nor moralizes; instead she looks on the world that she depicts with amused ardor. There is no trace of the vicious cycle of disappointment which chokes personalities. Only pleasure persists, as if the artist would want to give these touching, anonym, self-made artists the chance to live on in her art. The paintings preserve the atmosphere of an imaginary moment of posing, where it is permissible to conspicuously enjoy yourself and your looks. The viewer is likewise charmed, aware of the pastel beauty of these richly detailed images. The paintings encase the harshness of the world they portray with feathery semiotic references, and eventually conceal everything that might have reminded the viewer of reality.

Mäkilä's paintings do not keep silent: due to spatial solutions and varied brushwork, the painting stays in motion. A musical vibration is born from the interplay between force and delicacy, breathtaking haste and static figures. The artist highlights the surface of her characters by quasi liberal strokes which hide the details ? that are the core. The background is brought to the front. This distinct, inverse manner of moving from the figure towards the background is typical for Mäkilä. The method is based on color fields, and characteristically for herself, Mäkilä relies on highlighting the material of the painting itself. The brushwork of the new paintings is more refined and lively, and it is balanced by elements of static decoration. The usage of paint rests coarse, splattering and impressive; it accentuates the idea of evanescence and haphazard. The technique coincides with the subject."