Edward Kienholz once declared, “I can see the results of ideas in what is thrown away by a culture.” A compulsive bricoleur, he found most of his materials in thrift shops, dumps, and garbage cans and used them in ways that retained their original identity. By way of this cacophonous assemblage of rejects and detritus, he developed an aesthetic that linked American social problems with popular culture. His work expresses itself in puzzling language, through forms and materials that don’t quite make sense when adjacent to each other. Even though these sculptures are made of recognizable materials and are on a one-to-one scale with the real world, they possess mystifying qualities often at odds with their subject matter…see the entire article in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
