2014’s Trumpeter is a stout wooden body in a suit, but with a fiberglass trumpet in place of a head and neck. As the viewer approaches it, the trumpet spouts aggressive-sounding nonsense: it mumbles what seems to be a lively and condescending monologue. The majority of the other works displayed likewise become animated in when approached, an effect that is startling and amusing.
White Man of 2015-2017 closes the show much in the way that Face Time opened it—with larger than life suspended figures hovering above the viewer. In this case, three men appear to float upward, as if being abducted by invisible forces. All in white, their faces are partially obscured by their sheer height, so they do not confront us like Face Time does. Instead, their monochrome uniformity seems to comment on the racial homogeneity of corporate America just as much as their hollow backs point to the vacuous nature of many mega-corporations. Like this closing piece, the show’s collection of mechanized depictions of corporate robots is condemning, clever, and surprising all at once.
