Have you been wondering about the giant sculpture hanging in The General this month?
Read on…
Uta Riccius’ process begins with used plastics – grocery store style prepared food packaging. She re-configures these containers to create molds from which she then casts in white gypsum cement (hydrocal), utilizing the inherent patterns and forms. Bright white in colour, the castings have a newness and purity contrasted by their resemblance to fossils, crustaceans, fungi or microscopic organisms. There is a playfulness to this technique and the resulting pieces have a sense of irony in that they originate from items created for mass-consumption, discarded by most people without any consideration.
Recycling is just one aspect of Uta’s work. She takes this idea further by making colourful drawings of how she imagines these ‘fossils’ would have looked had they been living things. Through photography, digital manipulation and printing techniques, she plays with methods of presentation by making composites images and assemblages. Now the ‘fossils’ appear to be biological evidence presented in science textbook form. Fossils inspire human fascination with the origins of life, ideas of evolution and the instinctual pursuit of scientific discovery.
The composite images engage another layer of ideas: they directly reference the work of 19th century German artist/scientist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel created thousands of accurately detailed drawings of micro-organisms, plants and animals which were published in multiple editions. He gained huge popularity and played an important role is spreading public interest in natural science and Darwinism, of which he was a major proponent in Germany. As evidenced by Riccius’ work, his influence continues today. By replicating her work in the same manner as Haeckel, Riccius makes us question how scientific evidence is presented, by whom and how such evidence can be perceived.
Riccius’ sculptures and images easily stand on their own as interesting works of art. Because of how they are made, they remind us of the predominance of oil-based products in our daily lives. They address our responsibility to recycle household plastics and obligation to care for the planet. At the same time, they make us consider important advances in scientific and evolutionary thought through the centuries.
PLASTIK (German term for both the material and the qualities of plasticity) challenges us on many levels, allowing us to marvel at the uniquely human quality of artistic creativity through the observance of, and profound respect for, nature.
