Cenotaph /Golden Matress (working title) By Hannes Bend
Cenotaph/Golden Mattress (working title), will be a life-size candy cast golden mattress. The sculpture will be left unvarnished, inviting the viewers to lick the vertically standing piece. Placed erect in the room, its shape and size is reminiscent of a tombstone- paying homage to life with an acknowledgement of death. The color gold is significant for its long historical ties to the afterlife, specifically within ancient Egyptian culture. So while the visual association will firstly be of a mattress, the oblong shape and golden hue will also allude to a monument or sarcophagus. I want to juxtapose this symbolic color with a significant object of the same topic from our contemporary culture. The bed bookends our life; a place of conception and as a place for death. It is where we act our most intimate and vulnerable and therefore our most private. By bringing the private into the public, I want to show life and death as the great equalizer among us.
The cast of the mattress will be one of two options: A hospital bed (to reference birth and death in the public sense) or a bed from a private estate (to reference it within a personal narrative driven by sleep, sex and illness). This decision will be made upon further research. The mattress is crucial not only for its significance as a bed but its role as the 'universal' resting place. Although the way we enter and leave the world are similar the life that makes up the time in between varies. For this reason I will keep the golden color of the candy cast consistent but change the flavors that run throughout. Each participant will have a different interpretation of the same object. Like Felix Gonzales Torres’ candy pieces before me, I want to incorporate the use of candy as a means of participation. However, instead of having each individual take a piece with them, I want the consumption to be put out in the open as a participatory event. Licking, as a primal act, on display in a public forum. By transforming the everyday into a topic of conversation it works on many levels: the metaphorical object of birth and death, consumption in relation to life and personal identity, and bringing private acts into public space.
Cenotaph /Golden Matress (working title) By Hannes Bend
Cenotaph/Golden Mattress (working title), will be a life-size candy cast golden mattress. The sculpture will be left unvarnished, inviting the viewers to lick the vertically standing piece. Placed erect in the room, its shape and size is reminiscent of a tombstone- paying homage to life with an acknowledgement of death. The color gold is significant for its long historical ties to the afterlife, specifically within ancient Egyptian culture. So while the visual association will firstly be of a mattress, the oblong shape and golden hue will also allude to a monument or sarcophagus. I want to juxtapose this symbolic color with a significant object of the same topic from our contemporary culture. The bed bookends our life; a place of conception and as a place for death. It is where we act our most intimate and vulnerable and therefore our most private. By bringing the private into the public, I want to show life and death as the great equalizer among us.
The cast of the mattress will be one of two options: A hospital bed (to reference birth and death in the public sense) or a bed from a private estate (to reference it within a personal narrative driven by sleep, sex and illness). This decision will be made upon further research. The mattress is crucial not only for its significance as a bed but its role as the 'universal' resting place. Although the way we enter and leave the world are similar the life that makes up the time in between varies. For this reason I will keep the golden color of the candy cast consistent but change the flavors that run throughout. Each participant will have a different interpretation of the same object. Like Felix Gonzales Torres’ candy pieces before me, I want to incorporate the use of candy as a means of participation. However, instead of having each individual take a piece with them, I want the consumption to be put out in the open as a participatory event. Licking, as a primal act, on display in a public forum. By transforming the everyday into a topic of conversation it works on many levels: the metaphorical object of birth and death, consumption in relation to life and personal identity, and bringing private acts into public space.