Objets d’Art

“The desperate attempt to make a toaster oven—that in itself is art,” says Kevin Landers, who captures such effort by rendering everyday objects in materials such as Plexiglas, mylar, and vinyl. The oven was part of Thrift Store Appliance Shelf, an installation of instantly recognizable objects that included a blue-bladed tabletop fan, a boxy turntable, a chunky silver Walkman, and a black hairdryer with blue and red switches—exhibited at the Elizabeth Dee Gallery this spring. The show also included Chip Rack, Bicycle Signpost, Radio, and Lottery Shelf. Landers, who deals in Modern furniture and whose mother designs packaging, is documenting what he calls “some normal person’s design decisions.”

Landers’s sculptures were first exhibited alongside his urban photographs in a 1994 show called New York, held at the David Zwirner Gallery, which featured an ATM and a Domino’s Pizza uniform made out of duct tape. He shifted from making discrete objects in a 2003 Elizabeth Dee show, when he installed a wall lined with 60 pseudo sneakers suggestive of big brands, a stack of red-upholstered black metal chairs like the ones found in Chinese food restaurants, and a flock of pigeons feeding off pizza on the floor. But these large-scale installations marked a departure from the common, sometimes makeshift, subjects that usually capture his attention.

All of these sculptures are created from memory. “Not seeing things in front of me kind of forces me to design myself,” Landers says. “And it gives my work that hand-drawn aspect, like a bad drawing. I feel like I would lose my hand in it if it were just a copy.”