Near the playground, Ichibot offers us a work that leaves me trying to untangle its layers of meaning. A dimpled sphere next to the playground launches hand puppets; the puppets land on the path between the playground and the castle, bouncing around a bit before coming to a stop. They are physical, so the viewer can kick them around; they are also temporary, so each puppet disappears after about a minute. There appears to be some random element in the launcher; the puppets are not all launched in exactly the same direction or with the same amount of force. Still, sometimes a newly launched puppet bumps into one or more of the ones that are already on the ground, and they interact.
The faces of the puppets are not typical youthful-looking child images, as one commonly sees on toys; rather, they have a wrinkled face, with a mustache truncated on both ends that reminds me of Adolf Hitler. The body part is small; my first reaction on seeing the piece is that the things tumbling were severed heads, not puppets. The puppet bodies come in random colors, but otherwise the puppets all appear to be identical.
This piece make me think of a lot of things. The location near the playground evokes toys that are casually thrown around by children. The severed look of them, combined with the vaguely Hitleresque look of the faces, suggests violence and perhaps retribution. And their colorful nature and the fact that they are physical suggest interaction and play. Very mixed messages, and I think that ambivalence is what makes it interesting.
I’ve been abstaining from leaving comments here on the BiW blog because I talked way too much recently and was sick of the sight of myself.
But, I never grow tired of Ichibot, because he and his art is so unique and brilliant. Recently he created an incredible large-scale work at Virtual Holland, entitled ‘episodic.collection’, that made extensive use of these puppet characters to tell a very intriguing and complex narrative. The atmosphere and depth he managed to imbue into it was just astounding and he does it time and time again throughout all his work.
I made an album of photos to document ‘episodic.collection’ which can be viewed here.
Left by Arahan Claveau on July 4th, 2008