How To Make Realistic Models
HOW TO MAKE REALISTIC MODELS
February 3rd - 23rd, 2019
How to Make Realistic Models satirically explores the notion of projecting, however laden with artifice, the illusion of perfection through the visual language of hobby model layout making. As in life, the work deceptively suggests that “if you only have the right materials and manipulate them just so, you too can have the perfect model layout (home) (body) (family) (______).” To do this, the work unashamedly indulges in anthropomorphism; inviting imitative habit— like smiling along with the performers on screen; in fact, the work relies on this reflexive characterization. The sculptures and works on paper employ synthetic materials like nylon, spandex, modelling turf, polyfill and acrylic to build modelled elements of an imagined community. Their relationship to one another, and to the viewer, is primarily based on analogy and begs participation in the self-indulgent ritual of ‘looks like’; asking you to analogize the images and modelled structures until they are comfortably tucked away into one’s memory with all other well-known objects and images; but this is a game of misrecognition played by the works. Often gendered and bodily, How to Make Realistic Models, utilizes upholstery fabric, model crafting materials and domestic items to replicate nostalgia, attempted perfection and the fallacy of both.