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Gary Justis
Sculptor Gary Justis’s Upholstered Playthings Seduce in
Plush
September 4 –
Justis established himself in the 1980s with a unique formal vocabulary that utilized industrial materials and functional forms to create rich metaphorical works steeped in the human parables of mythology. The works in Plush expand on Justis’s 1990s lexicon that saw him use oversized upholstered shapes to delve into more personal memories with lyrical results.
The works in Plush were inspired by Justis’s memories of the shadows created by car headlights shining on the wall of his bedroom as a boy. “The light had a way of compressing forms --- plants moving in the breeze, a beetle on a rock --- over a long distance onto a single flat wall surface. That shadow was the only memory of those objects I would ever have.” For Justis, these “shadow objects” were playthings, abstract forms that were part of a community of interacting players on a compressed landscape. This transformative experience in the artist’s life emphasized the humanness in all objects that fill our experience. The sculptures in Plush explore the sensations produced by objects in our environment and those objects’ material willingness to function as visual markers in a shared experience.
The Plush works are extensions of drawn forms influenced to a great extent by cartoon imagery. The large sculptures are crafted from various flat forms of shaped and fitted wood understructures, the proto-objects start as large cut-outs, then come to life when fabric and underlying padding is applied, suggesting a hyper-synthetic taxidermy.
Community Machine Gun was inspired by Justis’s father, a passionate inventor, who made a toy gun for Justis and his brother that could fire rubber bands in rapid succession. The work invites a variety of physical interactions from the viewer. The work is a hybrid of furniture, its shape resembling a semi-functional distorted sofa, as well as a surreal PlayStation. The work operates in the realm of the ridiculous, while at the same time becoming comically practical in satiating our desire to shoot, fling, hurl, toss, discharge, or throw something at something else. A projection accompanying the work displays rubber bands of various colors hitting the adjacent wall in a rapid-fire sequence.
The Nader, constructed from masonite and plywood, derives from Justis’s memory of the looming presence in his face of his childhood dog, Morgan, waking him up. During this experience his entire field of vision would be filled with the silhouette of his dog’s head creating the image of a solar eclipse that stayed with the artist for hours. Hanging from the gallery ceiling, The Nader, its abstract elliptical shapes seemingly consuming the air of gallery’s space, evokes the control Justis’s dog had in their relationship. For Justis, the emotional projection that describes the relationship with a pet mirrors the act of looking at sculpture where the viewer’s cultural and personal relationship with these works is continually transmuted by experience.
Gary Justis was born in Maize,
Community Machine Gun by Gary Justis, 2007, aluminum, fabric, wood superstructure, image projection unit, 51 H x 84 L x 68 W (inches)
To view images of the exhibition visit the web site, www.alfedenagallery.com.
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