You’ll never look at cardboard the same way again. While you’re breaking down liquor bottle and banker’s boxes from your last move, one can imagine that UK-born, Udine, Italy-based artist Chris Gilmour would be circling that pile of flattened cardboard, tapping the bottle of glue against his temple whilst contemplating what fantastic sculpture to pour himself into next.
His sculptures, devoid of any internal armatures or wooden skeletons, vary from life-sized (the car, the motorbikes) to desktop (the typewriter, the microscope). He notes that his earlier work was made with the most pristine cardboard he could find, whereas more current pieces, as his style has evolved, are more inclined to show their truer colors, i.e., “printing, tape, labels, etc.” left intact. Indeed, in studying the incredible level of detail applied to each sculpture—look at the chain and brakes on the ten-speed!—one’s first impulse is to climb on, climb in, tap the keys to see if the device really works, which is exactly what Gilmour intended.
“People often have a very immediate reaction to my works—they try to open the car door, or type on the typewriter and I like the game of contrasts—real/not real, functional/nonfunctional, heavy/light—and the sensation that causes. I think that the viewer projects himself into the work …”
