Aaron Kramer and George Pappadakis
Ranging from three inches in diameter to beach-ball size, Kramer’s spheroids are at once all the same and all different. They look like weathered, slightly rusty versions of the plastic mesh Wiffle balls that briefly appeared in American backyards before the advent of Nerf. Kramer fashions them from material he finds in and around the streets of Los Angeles, where he lives (though he got his start in Chicago), including concrete-reinforcement rods, aluminum strapping, and bristles that have fallen off street-cleaning machines. He must be a real pack rat, because some of the spheres are made from collections of things that would not all be found together. The Tape Measure Spheroid, as its name suggests, is 100 or more metal tape measures curved and woven together, though none of the inch markings are exposed enough to reveal the actual circumference of the object. Knots of copper wire and nails hold the orbits in place.
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The wood constructions and puzzle sculptures of George Pappadakis fit the toy category even better: with the exception of a few works, including a tabletop Ferris wheel that rotates and whose seats swivel, they come apart into dozens of asymmetrical puzzle pieces. These works, even more than Kramer’s, provoke questions about whether they belong in an art gallery. Because they’re so toylike, the issue for some viewers is whether they’re art or craft–the suggestion being that there is a difference, and that this difference is based on the creator’s training, motivation, or choice of material. But making the distinction is as intellectually crippling as distinguishing films from movies–the problem, I think, of people who didn’t like Pulp Fiction.
