Hephaestus' Lure

Hephaestus was the ancient Greek god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, metals and metallurgy, and as such, was the blacksmith of the gods. He is know to have created Aphrodite’s girdle, Hermes’ winged helmet and most famously, Pandora’s box.

The sculpture, Hephaestus’ Lure, made for this exhibition, looks to the ancient problem of form and content. I wanted to find a way to marry form and content so that they were indistinguishable from one another, in effect being form/form or content/content and each of those being mirrors of one another. In this sculpture, we have a trap without bait. The trap itself is the bait. By taking a very ordinary mousetrap found throughout Vietnam, and scaling it to a human size, we find a trap that would only temp a species that puts an abstract value on different types of elements. Like Pandora’s box, or the story of the Midas Touch, the human trap needs only desire to work.

This work was exhibited during the SMU-ASEAN Residency at the Singapore Management University in the Content: Navigating a Point exhibition.

This work is a precursor to Human Trap

DETAILS

2010

Hephistus' Lure
Sculpture. Iron, Gold Paint
200 x 110 x 10 cm


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