
El Comino Wagon
2017
El Camino Wagon (2017) is a monumental assemblage by Aaron Fowler that commands space with the physical authority of the vehicle its title evokes. Stretching over four meters wide and exceeding three meters in height, the work fuses conference tables, poker tables, actual car body parts, tires, and a functioning fan into a sprawling construction that hums with the accumulated weight of memory, identity, and aspiration. Blonde wigs, fitted caps, CDs, speakers, and mirrors animate the surface alongside photographs from a California road trip, binding personal narrative to the broader American mythology of the open road. Acrylic and enamel paint unify these disparate elements without flattening their individuality, each component retaining its original charge while contributing to a collective visual and material argument. Fowler constructs his works as lived documents rather than representations, and El Camino Wagon exemplifies this commitment. The El Camino, a hybrid vehicle that is simultaneously car and truck, functions as a governing metaphor for in-between states, figures who occupy multiple identities, cultures, and geographies at once. The road trip photographs anchor the piece to specific experience while opening it toward universal questions about movement, freedom, and who gets to claim those concepts. The sheer scale of the work is inseparable from its meaning, demanding the viewer's physical reckoning in a way that no painting confined to a stretcher could achieve. Currently exhibited at the Hammer Museum, this signed work represents one of the most ambitious examples of Fowler's practice from his formative period and carries significant institutional backing that underscores its place within the broader conversation around contemporary American assemblage.
- Medium
- Conference tables, poker tables, mirrors, found car body parts, Blonde wigs, mirror, fitted caps, CDs, speakers, tires, a fan, photographs from a California road trip, screws, acrylic, enamel paint
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Location
- Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Hammer MuseumView on map
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