Whopper Pyramid
This piece had a really, really long Robert Williams-ish title when I showed it in the Tree of Life show at the El Camino Community College Gallery. The title was insufferably witty, I’m sure, but I can’t remember it for the life of me.
History and Ideas Behind the Piece
In 2001 I was on a road trip to New York. We were making some serious time in a rented SUV. It was hot and sticky everywhere. Anyways, a carton of Whoppers got wedged under a seat and was exposed to a variety of temperatures on our way to New York. We cleaned out the car in New York, and I discovered the carton of Whoppers, noticing that they had fused together into a semi-regular pattern. I immediately wanted to work with stuck together Whoppers as a sculptural object.
In the context of the Tree of Life show, the Whopper pyramid was intended to be a comment upon the “watering down” of societal values. The Whoppers function as stand ins, or replacements, for the pyramidal stacks of apples that are in every supermarket. The fruit of the Tree of Life is shown as disposable, of negligible nutritional value, and insignificant in size. Maybe it’s the 1960’s futurist “food pill” version of the fruit of the Tree of Life.
Although I was able to construct a Whopper Pyramid for this piece, I still would like to do a really large one. Not sure what th context of that would be, but I’m really attracted to the aesthetic of a large four sided pyramid of malt balls.
Construction and Materials
I originally intended to build a pyramidal plywood mold and just fill it with Whoppers. It didn’t work - largely because Whoppers vary more in size than I thought. They just wouldn’t take the shape of the mold. It was frustrating.
I consulted with Michele Hubacek, who assists me in all things, and we came to the conclusion that the Whoppers needed to be sorted manually and then assembled into a pyramid manually, with each one being slightly melted into it’s neighbors. Due to my insane schedule at the time, Michele did all of the assembly of this piece. She has a much better hand for this kind of thing than I do and it probably looked 110% percent better for me not touching it.
After being assembled, it was carefully transported to the gallery and placed on the IKEA shelf on which it was displayed. I’m not sure if I consider the shelf to be part of the piece or not.
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