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Kathryn Andrews — "Bozo"™ "The World’s Most Famous Clown" Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Blue Variation)
Kathryn Andrews

"Bozo"™ "The World’s Most Famous Clown" Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Blue Variation)

2014

A towering inflatable bop bag modeled after the iconic licensed character Bozo the Clown anchors this 2014 work by Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews, standing nearly eight feet tall in aluminum, vinyl, and polyurethane with chrome-plated steel accents. The piece belongs to a body of work in which Andrews mines the aesthetics of entertainment, spectacle, and commodity culture, using recognizable pop iconography to probe questions of power, desire, and the mechanisms by which cultural figures are constructed and consumed. The blue variation carries a particular charge, its cheerful graphic surface held in deliberate tension with the unnerving undertow that clown imagery has long carried in the American cultural imagination. What distinguishes this work is the performance component embedded within its conception, a live element that activates the sculpture and shifts its register from static object to event. Andrews consistently implicates the body, whether human or effigy, in her investigations of spectacle and complicity, and the bop bag is an especially pointed vehicle for that inquiry. The toy's design, weighted to absorb impact and spring back upright, becomes a meditation on resilience, endurance, and the odd violence latent in play. The work was formerly held in the collection of Julie Miyoshi in Santa Monica and is currently on offer through the Nasher Sculpture Center, representing a significant opportunity to acquire a sculptural work that operates simultaneously as cultural critique, formal object, and live proposition.

Medium
Aluminum, vinyl, polyurethane, chrome-plated steel, performance
Overall
Signed
Yes
Location
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX

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About this work

Kathryn Andrews, "Bozo"™ "The World’s Most Famous Clown" Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Blue Variation), 2014

A towering inflatable bop bag modeled after the iconic licensed character Bozo the Clown anchors this 2014 work by Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews, standing nearly eight feet tall in aluminum, vinyl, and polyurethane with chrome-plated steel accents. The piece belongs to a body of work in which Andrews mines the aesthetics of entertainment, spectacle, and commodity culture, using recognizable pop iconography to probe questions of power, desire, and the mechanisms by which cultural figures are constructed and consumed. The blue variation carries a particular charge, its cheerful graphic surface held in deliberate tension with the unnerving undertow that clown imagery has long carried in the American cultural imagination. What distinguishes this work is the performance component embedded within its conception, a live element that activates the sculpture and shifts its register from static object to event. Andrews consistently implicates the body, whether human or effigy, in her investigations of spectacle and complicity, and the bop bag is an especially pointed vehicle for that inquiry. The toy's design, weighted to absorb impact and spring back upright, becomes a meditation on resilience, endurance, and the odd violence latent in play. The work was formerly held in the collection of Julie Miyoshi in Santa Monica and is currently on offer through the Nasher Sculpture Center, representing a significant opportunity to acquire a sculptural work that operates simultaneously as cultural critique, formal object, and live proposition.

Medium
Aluminum, vinyl, polyurethane, chrome-plated steel, performance
Dimensions
overall: 233.7 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm
Year
2014
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, United States

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