Caliban's Collection...

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on September 14, 2012 at 10:04am

Curator’s Comment:  

 

Caliban’s Collection of Beautiful Things does in fact entrance the viewer with its taxonomy based display of fantastical creatures.  Winged and insect- like, the individual drawings suggest alien space ships and diminutive flying vessels.  Rather than being pinned down, they’re left to float within the inky black spatial field.  The solid contrasting background also helps me to appreciate their fine detail, and provides a visual rest from the obsessive rendering. While I can’t differentiate their actual scale, they appear only slightly threatening with their jagged tipped appendages.  I find it curious that they don’t, with all of their intricacy, have clearly distinguishable heads or eyes.  The absence of these expressive features along with reading them as a controlled collection renders them harmless.   The small inclusions of high chroma color also animate the forms, and suggest a whimsical, albeit invented, nature.