A commentary on consumption and fetish, the Swiss-born, London-based artist Andrea Hasler transformed the Gusford Gallery in Los Angeles into a pop-up boutique of the grotesque. Wax sculptures cast to resemble raw meat and offal combine with the hardware of deconstructed designer handbags. The effect invites viewers to engage with familiar luxury good icons and challenges notions of affluence with its unsettling corpulence.
“I am very fascinated with the psychological aspect of consumerism and its emotional link to ‘Abject,'” Hasler shares in an interview with HungerTV. “The abject quality inhibits our instant desire to touch the soft and malleable surface. The works speak of nature, which reference existentialist moments within the repetitive scenario between power and struggle, consumed and consumer, subject and object, action and reaction in popular culture.”
Burdens of Excess will be on view at the Gusford Gallery through August 10th, 2013.
