Natalie Purschwitz and Kelly Lycan

curated by Makiko Hara

January 15, 2011 - March 15, 2011
Centre A, Vancouver, BC, Canada

i can see your underwear, a site-specific installation by Vancouver based artists Natalie Purschwitz and Kelly Lycan, focused on a ubiquitous but ideologically charged material—plastic. The artists examined the relationship between material culture and mythology.

The title, i can see your underwear, hearkens back to schoolyard taunts, suggesting a momentary spectacle, both shameless and shameful depending on one’s position. Like the emperor and his new clothes, the metaphoric transparency of the materials belies its true nature, and while we are seduced by its colourful cheer we also come to realize that we are frolicking in our own demise.

For this exhibition viewers were drawn into the vast and cavernous space of Centre A through a series of installations that attempted to lure them into a visceral plastic world: An over-abundant swing referenced Rococo excess; a soft, giant shrine nodded toward the seductive structure of a bower-bird’s lair; a super-saccharin tower of transparent treats smacked of Babylonian and Platonic references.

i can see your underwear

vestibule

vestibule - detail

behaviour modification I

hand and pocket

hand and pocket/ mobile molecular mass

mobile molecular mass

water bottle

water bottle - detail

i can see your underwear/ blinds drapes shutters

i can see your underwear

blinds drapes shutters - detail

i can see your underwear/ mobile molecular mass

one drop fountain/ on golden swamp

duolith with limpid pool

last resort

last resort - close up

last resort - detail

installation view

installation view with vestibule, no name 1298 and carnation and cabbage

no name 1298

no name 1298 - close up

carnation and cabbage

carnation and cabbage - detail

installation view

"I can't believe they're not jeans"

suck bucket

pretty uglies

Pretty Uglies - detail

photos by Scott Massey and Kelly Lycan