Jason Rogenes works with white Styrofoam, but not Styrofoam in regular geometries (like Jason Powers) rather, he works with waste– the styrofoam used in electronics packaging. Instead of keeping answering machines, computers or coffee pots in place, these nonuniform pieces are usually lit from within, in combinations that can sprawl along walls like works of architectural science fiction, or can assemble in aggregated, columns that resemble spacecraft that somehow floated in an art gallery. I can’t think of other instances where the translucency of styrofoam becomes this pronounced, light pooling in the shapes of missing consumer goods. But with walls covered in back-lit Styrofoam, who would miss an old answering machine?

Alex

Jason Powers is clearly a Star Wars fan: he named his blog Star Wars Modern and tweets under the same name- but don’t expect Skywalker to be his subject matter or expect an homage to Yoda. That’s John in the lowest image installing a recent work: Fat Bastard. What appears to be the result of complex computational processes is actually just Powers meticulously arranging and rearranging regular sizes of styrofoam blocks by hand. He writes in his blog:

The relationship between technology and the contemporary art world is a fraught one. While genuine excitement surround projects that use powerful computer programs or novel CNC fabrication techniques and art history can be unrolled as a series of technologies, most historians, curators, collectors and artists are best described as late-adopters, if not out right non-adopters.

Alex