i can see your underwear

Natalie Purschwitz and Kelly Lycan

curated by Makiko Hara

January 15, 2011 - March 15, 2011
Centre A, Vancouver, BC, Canada

i can see your underwear, a site-specific installation by Vancouver based artists Natalie Purschwitz and Kelly Lycan, focused on a ubiquitous but ideologically charged material—plastic. The artists examined the relationship between material culture and mythology.

The title, i can see your underwear, hearkens back to schoolyard taunts, suggesting a momentary spectacle, both shameless and shameful depending on one’s position. Like the emperor and his new clothes, the metaphoric transparency of the materials belies its true nature, and while we are seduced by its colourful cheer we also come to realize that we are frolicking in our own demise.

For this exhibition viewers were drawn into the vast and cavernous space of Centre A through a series of installations that attempted to lure them into a visceral plastic world: An over-abundant swing referenced Rococo excess; a soft, giant shrine nodded toward the seductive structure of a bower-bird’s lair; a super-saccharin tower of transparent treats smacked of Babylonian and Platonic references.

photos by Scott Massey and Kelly Lycan

vestibule - detail

mobile molecular mass / hand and pocket

hand and pocket

behaviour modification 1

i can see your underwear / blinds drapes shutters

water bottle

mobile molecular mass

blinds drapes shutters - detail

last resort

one drop fountain / on golden swamp

i can see your underwear / mobile molecular mass

last resort - detail

last resort - detail

no name 1294 - detail

no name 1294

carnation and cabbage

installation view

"I can't believe they're not jeans"

pretty uglies

vestibule - installation view

pretty uglies - detail

vestibule

suckbucket