Andrew Lewicki is one of those artists who should be big, I mean at the top of his game. But he isn't and I have no idea why. He knocks out a great line in visual punnery, subverting the familiar, exorcising form from function, hyperrealising the mundane, and generally messing with his audience's minds. Lewicki's work is well known in and around L.A, he was even featured in Frieze Magazine a couple of years ago, but for some reason that eludes me he hasn't broken into the big time. Maybe the art's world is losing its sense of humour, perhaps pop has lost its pizazz, or maybe life is just plain unfair. Who knows. Still, I am sure I am not alone in my appreciation for his highly original and visually stunning work.
At times the dysfunctionalism of Lewicki's sculptures remind me a tad of Marcel Duchamp, the Godfather of Post Modernism. For example Duchamp's 'assisted readymade' entitled 'Bicycle Wheel' which can no longer function as either as a bicycle or a chair, it hangs, devoid of function, in the viewer's gaze. Much like Lewicki's 2010 piece 'Accordion Obscura', which essentially neither functions as a camera nor an accordion but appears as an impotent hybrid of the two.
Lewicki's Petit Déjeuner' (2008) on the other hand is a hybrid ceramic piece that merges the a lemon juicer with an ashtray. In truth it retains its functionalism as an object, being able to squeeze juice and contain cigarette ash, however the aesthetic notion of the two merged together is instinctively repulsive. He has also produced works such as 'Concrete Lego' which offers up a decent slice of home-grown nostalgic surrealism, and does again retain a proportional sense of function, and technically, perhaps even more efficiently than a row of traditional builder's bricks. I'm not sure how intentional the reference, but it also throws one's mind back to Carl Andre's 'Equivalent VIII' commonly referred to as 'The Bricks', which caused a great deal of controversy when The Tate purchased the sculpture, and was seen by the general public as a terrible waste of money. The irony is that Andre's experiments with the abstract balance between the spiritual and the material, one that manifests as harmony, proportion and pure order, provided a parallel with the Tate's own history. Having been build and funded by the sugar tycoon Henry Tate who made his fortune manufacturing identical cubes of the sweet stuff for public consumption.
Lewicki's transposition of a famous cookie manufacturer's branding to a cast iron manhole cover in his 'Oreo Manhole Cover' (2010) subverts the familiar, and undermines the subconscious consensus that forms and runs society itself. Especially in a capitalist society. Our childhood is transfused with a flickering internal movie of first moments, the art of identification and visual association fuels the engine of capitalism, and in particular the notion of consumer choice. We associate with products as deeply as we do with our families and friends, our brightest and darkest moments in life, our internal dialogue that continues to assess a spectrum of human experience. Some so deeply, as with one's favourite brand of biscuit, or a mundane piece of street furniture, that we consciously ignore their visual and emotional impact on our lives. That is until its presence has been removed. Leaving one hungry and at the bottom of a street sewer. The merging of these two objects, both highly pedestrian in nature, forms a bubble of logic in the mind, something akin to a criticism against over elaboration, or a celebration of minimalism.
His earlier works such as his 'Walnut Skate Ramp' (2007) and 'Gold Plated Handrail' lavish the functionalism of the skater environment with an unnecessary degree of quality, materially speaking, elevating them to status symbols. Something that culturally, within the skater community, would be seen as a perversion of the sport's ideology. Yet in context, at least from an outsider's perspective, the association of this particular subculture within a greater and highly materialist mainstream culture, seems fitting.
View the rest of Andrew Lewicki's projects at www.AndrewLewicki.com.
