Sculpture

Chad Gunderson’s “Natural” Works Are Very Unnatural

Chad Gunderson

Chad Gun­der­son­’s sculp­tures look whol­ly unnat­ur­al, but truth be told, I can’t quite fig­ure out what he used to pro­duce his pieces. That’s the point of his work, though, as explained through his artist statement:

The term “nat­ur­al” can be elu­sive and ambigu­ous. Addi­tives can be used in an attempt to aug­ment and ampli­fy fla­vor, col­or, and tex­ture. The sculp­tures I cre­ate are decep­tive in a sim­i­lar way; col­or schemes and sur­faces from com­mer­cial items have been inject­ed into organ­ic forms, twist­ing them into some­thing dif­fer­ent entirely.

Influ­ences such as Lego bricks, 8‑bit video game sprites, and vin­tage Tup­per­ware have been mixed up and are unearthed along with my geo­log­ic obses­sions. Arbi­trar­i­ly sculpt­ed by wind, sand, and water, the allure of rocks is con­verse to the clean aes­thet­ics and delib­er­ate choic­es of man­made items. With play­ful naivety, my work is an attempt to high­light and under­stand the fringe between these two seem­ing­ly opposed objects.

As some­one who just fin­ished the Whole 30 diet and gave up sham­poo (total­ly not as gross as it sounds), you begin to real­ize how many chem­i­cals are in every­day things once you read the labels. It’s unnerv­ing when you real­ly think about it (why does toma­to paste need high fruc­tose corn syrup?!) Gun­der­son­’s work is a reminder of this decep­tive beauty.

All images via his web­site. H/T thinx.

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