Saturday, April 25, 2015

Exhibition Review: Pink Elephants on Parade By Nick van Woert

            The exhibition Pink Elephants on Parade was hold between February and March. Nick van Woert tended to explore the meaning of objects. Growing up in Reno, Nevada, Woert had surrounded by the architectures built with imitated materials, which meant a sculpture was no longer made by natural substances; instead, the material was synthesized from chemical matters. Pink Elephants on Parade presented the similar idea. The installed works were all large sculptures made from artificial materials to represent natural landscape, implying the fakeness of material use on architecture.
            The materials Woert used for his works are usually various and unlimited. Additionally, most of the presented works were named as Untitled. Because Woert is interested in the meaning of word and how it connects to material, the name Untitled may refer to a particular purpose. In Pink Elephants on Parade, I was interested in the sculpture Untitled. Although Untitled shared its name with other sculptures, it contained the most materials among the displayed works. The materials contained many kinds of granular substances such as cat litter, coal slag, plaster, pulverized plastic, steel, and bronze. Other materials like base coat, joint compound, and Plexiglas were also used to support the sculpture structure. To me, Untitled was really attractive because it strongly presented Woert's opinion of the material use on modern architecture. If the materials of Untitled had not been listed, the audience might have thought it was simply made from colored sands. 
            By using the title Pink Elephants on Parade from the Disney movie Dumbo, I think Woert tended to emphasize the illusion of modern architecture. In the scene of Pink Elephants on Parade, Dumbo sees a series of illusion after being accidentally drunk. Similarly, Woert's exhibition reveled the imitation of architectural material, replacing the substances from natural sources with various chemicals.

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