![]() ![]() In Sc-scaffold (London prick), the intensely yellow bust of a bearded figure suggests a paradoxical form, both classical and contemporary in origin when seen from behind, however, the yellow gives way to a craggy, metallic material reminiscent of sunken treasure, with the word ‘London’ stamped into its surface in the style of a hallmark. ![]() The exhibition also suggests that high-end objects undergo their own version of tarnish and decay as they are transported from one realm (be it spatial, temporal, or cultural) to another. The quality of luxury (especially as it pertains to artworks) becomes but one more burden that humans place upon the supposedly inert objects with which they surround themselves. However, once displaced in the fictive, quasi-nautical realm that Claydon has created, these same colors simultaneously call to mind the seedier side of cultural transit, one that includes container ships and other purely utilitarian objects. It can be seen in the color palette of reds, yellows, and neutral tones that unites the disparate materials on display, and keys associations, for instance, to high-end brands and the surfaces they fetishize. Luxury is in fact one of the principal lines of signification that have been woven throughout the show. The containers, as forms, are thereby displayed in a state of revolt against the utilitarian or servile roles into which they have traditionally been cast: they are allowed to shine as their own luxurious beings, even as they are elevated to the status of works of art and become cultural ‘products’ of another kind. Claydon transforms the container––itself predicated on absence and what might fill it, like a floating signifier––into a modernist totem perched on self-consciously museological bases. Prime examples of this thrust in the work are two sculptures based on canister-like forms that have been rendered in highly finished materials. Throughout, signifiers borrowed from maritime and shipping contexts have been passed through a visual sieve woven from numerous art historical tropes. The exhibition consists of both floor- and wall-based works, and includes materials as diverse as steel, wood, aluminum, oil paint, straw, cuttlefish ink, and seaweed. Total Social Objects focuses on the migration of cultural forms, taking into account both physical movement and the transit of objects through hierarchies of ideas, values, and symbols. In Claydon’s sculptures, objects are not seen as the antitheses of living things, but as entities that differ from the living by a difference of a degree, possessed of their own ‘animism’ and with their own capacity for will, hubris, and desire. This process involves a wide range of social, historical, economic, and literary factors, and is intended to differentiate an object’s social or anthropocentric ‘agency’ from its innate, ‘thingly’ materiality. Steven Claydon dramatizes and interrogates the ways in which objects have been described, venerated, understood and misunderstood throughout the course of civilization. ![]() The exhibition opens on April 27 and runs through Jan opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 27 from 6:00 until 9:00 pm. David Kordansky Gallery is very pleased to announce Total Social Objects, an exhibition of new work by Steven Claydon.
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