Similar to the work Dialogue (2005), Heino has paralleled in Wearing Surface and Pressure long, blond hair with black car tyres. The hair, provided by a wholesaler in London, originates in Asia, and it is a product of the global market economy, which has tuned various parts of the human body in commodities, too. The dialogue between nature and culture, also presented in some of Heino's earlier works, has this time an ironic note, for it may be difficult to decide which one of the two is more “natural”: worn-out tyre or industrially bleached hair. The parallelism involves a conscious play with clichés, because the combination brings to mind girlie calendars hanging on the walls of garages as well as the fetishism connected with black rubber and blond hair. One can also see a certain kinship between these works and David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), a film based on the novel by J. G. Ballard, concerning the peculiar sexual relationship between human beings and cars, flesh and machinery.

© Marja Jalava, 1999