Video projectors, video monitors, DVD players, audio player
Variable dimensions
2003
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • Mixed media: Video projectors, video monitors, DVD players, audio player • Variable dimensions • 2003
For his solo exhibition Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops at the Kemi Art Museum in northern Finland, near the Arctic Circle, Richard Humann reimagines the fantasy world of The Wizard of Oz through video manipulation and installation. Four well-known musical numbers from the film were digitally transformed to produce visual effects reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis, bringing the familiar imagery of American popular culture into the atmospheric landscape of the northern Laplands.
Monitors were arranged along a long, winding path from the museum entrance to the exhibition space. Their screens flashed brightly colored yellow words—“Follow, Follow, Follow” and “Because, Because, Because”—turning the journey into a visual and psychological invitation. The repeated phrases function as both directions and incantations, drawing visitors forward while echoing the film’s themes of searching, belief, and the desire to reach somewhere beyond the familiar.
The exhibition brings together two distinct forms of fantasy: the Americana mythology of The Wizard of Oz and the otherworldly spectacle of the northern lights. Through digital manipulation, Humann transforms recognizable cinematic material into something strange and atmospheric, as though the film’s dreamlike world has detached itself from its American origins and drifted into the Arctic night.
The title evokes the promise of a place where troubles dissolve, borrowing from the film’s association of Oz with escape, transformation, and wish fulfillment. By relocating this cultural fantasy to northern Scandinavia, Humann creates a passage between popular memory and unfamiliar surroundings. Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops invites viewers to follow a trail of images and words into a space where the boundaries between cinema, landscape, and imagination begin to blur.
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • Mixed media: Video projectors, video monitors, DVD players, audio player • Variable dimensions • 2003
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • A Place Behind the Sun • Video capture
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • Register Emotion, Jealousy, Devotion • Video capture
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • Things I Never Thunk Before • Video capture
Richard Humann • Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops • Without the Vim and Verb • Video capture
Photo credits: Richard Humann Studio