untitled sculpture (LARGE-SCALE FLEXIBLE&SEXY SELF-CANNIBALIZING NAKED VAMPIRE), Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama

This latest piece is part of a new body of work by Claude Wampler that represents a shift in her art making practice, turning from the reliance on ephmerality of action to materiality. Having worked with almost every media available to an artist, Wampler now utilizes the more classic and rudimentary materials to construct a formal art object. This unique artist, well known for her use of art objects as a ruse to penetrate the less obvious realms of temporality, the abstraction of value and the consumer’s role in the production of worth, has made the bold move to pure sculptural representation to unburden the art of consumption. This is the second in a series of large-scale mixed media sculptures that are suggestive, seductive, violent, visually stunning and meticulously constructed to suggest an alternate world, one filled with larger-than-life fantastical characters with powerful sexuality, the force of which is expressed through serene beauty; an allure only balanced by an equal amount of repulsion creating a divide within a singular monumental structure, a divide that provides a slim crevasse for meaning to slip through.

The sculpture is constructed from various mediums - steel, fiberglass, enamel paint, wax, synthetic hair, rubber, wood, cotton fabric and was built in several stages beginning with a customized steel frame that was then fitted with a cast fiberglass form which was then covered with a combination of wax, enamel, rubber and cotton linen. The synthetic hair on the sculpture was fabricated by the most famous and historical theatrical wig house, Bob Kelly, in New York and designed after the artist’s own hair. The worked was shipped to Yokohama in one piece from New York requiring a very large crate especially built to safely contain the 366x183x122 centimeters sculpture weighing 255 kilograms.

untitled sculpture (LARGE-SCALE FLEXIBLE&SEXY SELF-CANNIBALIZING NAKED VAMPIRE) was, just before the opening of this exhibition, purchased by Keanu Reeves.