Big Night For You? Boxes: I, II, III, IV

Max Avi Kaplan

Medium: oak wood, photo-printed acrylic, silver flakes.

Dimensions: (3) 11.75 x 18.5 inches and (1) 12.375 x 6.875 inches

Public Domain artwork referenced in this piece:

Pabst, Georg Wilhelm, dir. Die Büchse der Pandora: Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds Lulu. Nero-Film AG, 1929.

Artist Statement

Big Night For You? Boxes: I, II, III, IV, consists of four sculptural design objects inspired by the 1929 silent film Die Büsche der Pandora. The film explores the complexities and tragic consequences of glamour through the eyes of Lulu, the young protagonist, whose objectification by others ruins her and those around her.  The piece includes four rigid, rectangular, wooden, and reflective surfaces that hang on the wall.  The boxes are photo-printed mirrors that utilize the 1929 movie as graphic source material for a collage composition. Distorted images printed within the object reflect the inherent fragmentation of glamour, its obsession with mirrors, and the veneer of material illusions.

This mode of presentation invites an interactive exploration of the work, where the viewer becomes a voyeur and the object entraps the images and the viewer. Intended to serve as a mirror reflecting society’s inflated value of glamour, imbued in image-sculpture hybrids, the work alludes to both the commodified and commercialized nature of glamour and the entrapment of its participants in its illusions.

While there is an awareness of the pleasures inherent in glamour as luxury, its commercial and social value, and the implied feeling of self-worth, there is generally limited appreciation of its illusions and limitations. This work explores the pretense of glamour - how it hides desire beneath layers and via a fragmenting and alienating process.  Glamour isn’t pure, original, and whole. Rather, it is imagined and worked at, a man-made contraption.  There is sadness inherent in glamour, including a fear of loss, desire, anxiety, and the conflict between what is and what should be.  At the same time, glamour, with its fetishes and compulsions, attempts to ward off these negative feelings.  Steeped in psychological complexity, glamour exists in a field of the imagination, experimenting with new identities and fleeing towards an imagined ideal.

About the Artist: Max Avi Kaplan

Gallatin ’08, Steinhardt, ’12; Adjunct Faculty at Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Max Avi Kaplan is a visual artist and fashion arts scholar with a studio practice that explores the intersections between photography, sculpture, and industrial design. He has exhibited work internationally, with commissions featured in public and private collections. Selected exhibitions include: Neither Here Nor There at the Yuan Art Museum; Merry Go Round at Yve YANG Gallery; Current Obsession at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and ASA Open Studios at the HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg. He co-curated the exhibition Double Vision: Duality in Dress at NYU's 80WSE, which explored the interconnections between Fashion and Fine Art through photo-printed textile collaborations.

Kaplan holds a BA with a concentration in Material Culture Studies from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study and an MA in Visual Culture: Costume Studies from New York University's Steinhardt School of Education, where he wrote a thesis reconstructing the Viennese designer Joseph Urban's work for the Wiener Werkstätte's first showroom in America. He also earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, where he received the Boit Award and a fellowship with the Hochschule für bildende Künste to study in the workshops of Anselm Reyle and Thomas Demand. Recent teaching positions and coursework development include NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Experimental College at Tufts University.

Footnote

To watch a streaming version of Die Büchse der Pandora: Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds Lulu:

https://search.library.nyu.edu/permalink/01NYU_INST/1d6v258/alma990087316610107871 

Citation:

Pabst, G. W, Ladislaus Vajda, Georg C Horsetzky, Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz, et al. Die Büchse der Pandora : Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds Lulu = Pandora’s box : variations on the theme of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu. San Francisco, California, USA: Kanopy Streaming, 2014.