 |
| Proposal Sketch |
I
am making sculptures for a show probably in the fall of 2015 that will
consist of a series of heads based on pop culture characters and
internet memes, somewhat larger than "life-size," painted in full color
and suspended at roughly eye level.
These
will be characters that are somewhat monstrous- though perhaps in an
insipidly cute way, and have reached a significant level of cultural
saturation, perhaps because they are associated with or derived from a
movie or a video game.
I
am not interested in attentively illustrating them so much as using
them as a scaffold or point of departure for trying to make an
interesting piece of sculpture.
In format, this would be fairly similar to other projects that I have done in years past, including an installation at the National Portrait Gallery and Metaphor Gallery. Of course, these installations were collections of more or less life size portraits of actual people in the art world.
Following is a list of the some of the character possibilities with some notes:
From the lol cats: Grumpy Cat and/or Trash Cat, Lil Bub, cats wearing helmets made of grapefruit rinds.
Slenderman:
an intentionally constructed horror character who supposedly abducts
children. Recently blamed for stabbings perpetrated by 6th graders. (A
particular favorite of my sons.)
The
Slow Loris: a mammal that seems too cute to not have been manufactured
as pokemon or an anime character, the loris is endangered, exploited and
being tickled by humans in widely viewed online videos.
Dragon/Dinosaur/Kaiju/Godzilla:
the fan bases for these various franchises can certainly be quite
disparate, but the oversized, overpowered and implausible reptiles seem
very compelling for both adults and children
Masked
Men (Power Rangers/Storm Troopers/Ninjas): both superheroes and
villains, often with cyborg parts, they all seem empowered by masks that
cover all or at least the majority of their faces...though practically
speaking, it seems unlikely that they can see anything.
Humanoid robots (Terminator, Transformers)
Skull/death's
head/sugar skull. Skulls as decoration or symbol are ubiquitous.
Formerly a symbol of poison, pirates or bikers, they now appear on
children's clothing.
Creepy dolls: from Chucky to Annabelle
Zombies
Sharks
Other insipidly cute artificial animals: like "Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing on Rainbows"
Other scary animals, supernatural creatures and aliens: werewolves, vampires, xenomorphs, "Predators"
Etc.....
