Plastic Fantastic: A Synthetic Aesthetic
CuratorChristopher Chambers
About three years ago it occurred to me that I could actually make the things I have been painting all my life. My paintings were always of things, perhaps abstract conceptually, but always pictures of tangible objects. I don’t remember exactly how plastics first occurred to me–I bought a few supplies and returned them, flummoxed and befuddled by the processes and costs. But I never even considered traditional media such as stone and metal, wood and clay. A few more figurative "light bulbs" lit over my head and within six months my oil painting studio had transformed into a plastics lab. In my sharp learning curve, perhaps I should say incline, over the next two years I sought out and studied the few artists I could find in New York City working with these materials. What I discovered was a medium which inspired its handlers as much as the other way around. Michelangelo’s famous statement about the figures being already there inside the stone–the sculptors’ creed for the last 500 years–simply does not apply here. These materials are synthetic. There is nothing in nature that resembles the effects achievable with resins. The substance itself is science fiction; it can be molded or carved into limitless forms and colors and effects.
[The poisonous way we are living: carcinogenic society; unnatural food additives; surrounded by blasphemous compounds, pills and quick fixes. Fertilizers, hormones, microwaves … Prepackaged readymade phosphorescence: "Plastic Fantastic."]
The "Synthetic Aesthetic" is comprised of innovative sculptures and bas-reliefs focusing on the use of tangible synthetic new media such as plastics, epoxies and the like to create an abstracted and futuristic art that stylistically draws on many sources; from current industrial design to modernism in general. The curatorial selection of works and artists featured in this exhibition is primarily cohesive for a common science fiction aesthetic and not for the medium(s) alone. But these materials do avail unique effects, so it’s a bit of a "chicken or the egg" scenario. The sheer physicality of the molded and/or machined resins (plastics) and rubbers is impressive, and this show is unique partly because the popularity of these materials among many artists remains tempered by potential health hazards as well as the daunting learning curve involved in mastering the requisite temperamental and unforgiving processes. Many projects will require multi-million dollar mass production facilities that are generally out of reach to the individual artist. The corporate-scale production costs for a single prototype can be staggering. One answer is the manipulation or recontextualization of prefabricated components–"found objects." Bruce Moore and Jean Blackburn take full advantage of the cheap impression plastic elicits in our throw-away, consumer society. It is an amusing reversal, a sort of neo Arte Povera for the new century. To the other extreme, Doreen McCarthy painstakingly designs her inflated translucent forms using digital graphics programs, and outsources short run fabrication to cost effective factories both domestic and overseas. Peter Soriano, Ben Beaudoin, John Monti, and myself each opt for a more hands-on approach for the works in this exhibition, modeling forms by hand and with simple tools. Beaudoin exhibits his original models, while the others produce molds and show the final pigmented polyurethane castings. Cassandra Lozano and Susanna Starr work with prefabricated materials that are cut, tooled, or otherwise manipulated into artworks. David Fried and Krzysztof Zarebski employ combinations of these methodologies in order to achieve their unique visions. Bernd Naber and Felipe Cortes Clopatofsky are the "painters" of the group, although Naber’s paintings are in this case sculptures–he uses acrylic paint as a three-dimensional medium to create objects rather than images; Clopatofsky paints in the traditional sense of a picture on canvas: he renders images of plastic dolls and other objects encased in a chrysalis of resinous membranes. Each artist’s approach redefines the meeting point of mode and materiality, reflecting on our stilted utopian progress and ignites imaginings of things to come as art.
