Sculpture – Installation Mockups

I’ve been working on some pre-visualizations and mockups of a number of different pieces I might do.  Almost all of these images are set in a fake gallery environment, as I want to explore the notion of how these types of installations might affect the viewers' perception in the context of a gallery environment. (I get new ideas every day and may need to make a few more mockups in the coming week or so)

A lot of these are fairly rough graphics that are simply intended to get the idea across. For larger forms the final milled pieces would have a lot more detail, although I’m not sure if I’d be able to get them painted or not.

(you can click on many of these images to see a larger version)

Whacky Forms

Here’s an image a couple of interesting forms that would be fun to have made in the 3 foot size that could stand on a gallery floor.  I’m not sure if I’ll pursue this, but it relates to other ideas on manipulating scale.  (i.e. – a virus molecule made as a 3 foot sculpture, a dust mite** made as a 6 foot sculpture, etc… there are a lot of microscopic forms, such as amoeba, plankton and micro-organisms that seem to become something completely different just from being blown up hundreds of times over their original scale)

**Here's a dust mite in progress

 

Bellows Head

 

A table top display with a small bellows and a sculpted head with a tube inflating it.  (I have a similar idea with a deflated head attached to a dustbuster, but haven’t made a pre-vis image yet)

Figures Intersecting the wall and floor

The human figures in all of these are intended to be two to three foot figures, made from a combination of doll armatures, plastic milled parts or clay parts, etc...

Some of the ideas that I’m excited about have to do with forms that are intersecting the wall or floor, and I’d like to explore the conceptual ends of dealing with space and gallery space.  The notion of what’s on the other side of the wall is an interesting one; is is it a parallel universe, a frightening dungeon, a brighter and happier place than the room we’re currently in, etc?...  I think it’s possible to get viewers to think about these things through the juxtaposition of elements in the following ways.  And in the context of a gallery, the use of a picture frame suggests breaking into the picture plane as well.

 

Tableaus with Monsters Coming out of the Floor

There's something about the illustration of impending danger that fascinates me, and I think these installations use that as well as a number of other elements. The notion of a benign, homey scene with a monster coming up out of the floor is sort of like a movie scene or a moment frozen in time.

The human figures will be small (two to three feet in height) and sitting in small furniture, so the scale should give the monster a more imposing stature in the scene.

(The notion of scale will hopefully have the effect of a six foot sculpture on the floor being transposed into a 20 foot monster in the minds of the viewer, if the viewer thinks of the 2 or 3 foot figures as being full sized.)

Figure reaching into an image

This is the only piece where I’ve visualized a physical character interacting with an image on the wall.

It’s an interesting relationship between the form and the content and one that I think is worth pursing more.

(monster should be murkier and harder to see)

Wall splat

I like the idea of some substance that is pouring through the wall and collecting on either the floor or a table. I also like the idea of this type of form coming out of an image in picture frame, which could represent an explosion of the content into the actual gallery space. Need to develop this idea more.