Lead Pencil

Check out this picture of Lead Pencil Studio's installation, Extended Collapse, at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

I haven't seen the show but I'd like to.

It reminds me of a show I did see, Mark Manders' at the UCLA Hammer Museum last year.

Similar tactics are at work in both shows.

Familiar, domestic, workaday objects, in expected sizes and agreeable proportions, are simulated.

But surprise radiates from what's not correct.

The materials, industrial or unremarkable in normal contexts, are woken up. Textures of surfaces have been translated. Motion has been suspended; collision suggested, frozen.