| Robert Hengeveld |
| ersatz |
| January 6 - Jan 28, 2012 |
Robert Hengeveld's new installation project, ersatz, consists of a collection of materials used to create an expansive composition comprised of synthetic rocks and trees, a series of orchestrated cuckoo birds, a clothes iron, fog juice, glass beads, cardboard, packing tape, lumber, hacked wildlife decoys, and many other materials – some created with the intent of mimicry, while others awkwardly beginning to take on marginal references to the 'natural' landscape given their associated company. The installation is animated through the periodic inflating and deflating of an inflatable deer. A makeshift smoke machine creates a subtle mist at the base of the beaded waterfall. Cuckoo birds periodically pop in and out of holes which pepper the fabricated cliff façade. All this is overseen by a chrome coyote perched high above, looking over the entire installation – part romanticized emblem of nature, part dollar-store trophy. A small bunny tucked in behind some boxes quivers intermittently. The at times conflicting collection of these manufactured elements do not set out to pass judgment – synthetic good, synthetic bad – rather their collective association questions and examines our relationship to the increasingly manufactured environments around us, and our interest in mimicking all things natural – to the extent of embossing wood grain in plastic lumber. The amplification and manipulation of the artificial within this peculiar installation sets a platform in which our existing relationship to the synthetic can be explored; its fiction shedding light on the reality (or recreated reality) of the world we live in. |
