British artist Alex Chinneck has been distorting and twisting the physical world into surreal and mind-bending permutations for nearly a decade now. His latest work returns to the more humble world of indoor sculpture after five years of extraordinary large-scale work.
Chinneck's first major architectural installation came in 2012 with a work called Telling the Truth Through False Teeth. Attempting to subvert the classically held notion that a building filled with broken windows was an indication of a community accepting a type of social decline, Chinneck took over a derelict factory and fitted it with 312 identically broken windows.
Over the next few years, Chinneck produced a series of stunning large-scale installations that literally deconstructed familiar architectural principles. From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes melted a facade of a house down into its front garden, while Six pins and half a dozen needles cracked a brick wall into two as if it were an eggshell.
Perhaps one of Chinneck's most compelling pieces came in 2014. Called A Pound of Flesh for 50p, this was a temporary installation resembling a full-size house but made of 7,500 wax bricks. Each day Chinneck and his team took to the house with hand torches, slowly melting it down over a couple of months.
His latest work moves back to a smaller sculptural scale but is no less fantastic. Employing impressively sophisticated wood-working techniques, the new pieces literally tie in knots common materials that generally impress as solid. These logic-defying sculptures knot up wooden pillars and grandfather clocks, creating a bizarre final object that seems to subvert its own material quality.
Take a look through our gallery for a closer look at Chinneck's magnificently surreal work.
Source: Alex Chinneck