Go Big or Go Home

Chad Serhal - "Nothing New" -  2019 - 4"x4"

Prompt 1

There is a definite “play” in my small collages.  The size alone is playing with scale and the miniature.  The repetition of working within the same square at the same size is a form of play, dealing with creativity in how many different ways can I arrange paper in this space.  The fact that I am using paper to paint images, and my use of figures in other scenarios, thrown into my own created environment, is playful.  The text in the collages is always playing with the scene or image in the collage with a wit or humor.

In the book Stewart says, “The toy is the physical embodiment of the fiction: it is a device for fantasy, a point of beginning for narrative.”  A figure cut from a book about movies is a point of beginning for narrative, as well as a sheet of old paper, or just an irregular shape with an irregular stain.

Jeff Koons - "Seated Ballerina" - 2016 

Prompt 2

When I think of gigantic art, I think of Jeff Koons.  His “Seated Ballerina” sculpture made of stainless steel could possibly be a response to this book when it says, “We can not have a mammoth petite and graceful ballerina unless we want a parody” (p94).  Koons is taking something that is traditionally small, controlled, petite, and light, and making it strong, heavy, gigantic and public.  The challenge being, to not make the ballerina a parody, but to give it grace.  I believe because she is to scale, and the technique of the mirror polished stainless steel transparent color coating, and the beautiful colors used, he accomplishes this.  The piece still evokes a sublime freakishness, due to the large scale, but also because she is not standing in attention like the statues we’re used to.  She is sitting, leaned forward in the middle of a daily act, playing on natural and unnatural.  I personally wish Jeff Koons never existed.