'SPLOSIVE I-IV

or Baby gets what baby wants, or baby's gonna blow.

1, 3 & 4 Available $3900
4 X 2' X 2' - 2025
Made from polystyrene foam balls, kaolin, clay, modelling paste, oil, acrylic, pigment, uv archival spray on wood panel.

Building on almost 7 years of working with polystyrene foam balls, this series continues my exploration of this quintessentially contemporary material. I have amassed a collection of dozens of colours and sizes of these 'disposable' media, which behave essentially like physical pixels of colour. I began by creating a sculpted understructure in absorbent clay, modelling paste and kaolin, which I then repeatedly powdered with dry pigments. By creating tailored mixtures of differing sizes and shades of polystyrene balls, I can 'paint' the surface with indivisible, atomic units of colour to interact with the highly pigmented surface beneath. I then carved back negative space by applying a compound black oil paint, in an allover pattern reminiscent of printed fabrics and grafitti-soaked concrete. Candy-like, mouth-watering and joyfully contemporary, they question our relationship to 'ephemeral' goods that persist ecologically for milennia.