When you think of a work of art, what is it made out of? Clay, paint, pencil? For Chicago based artist Scott Carter, art can be made out of just about anything around him. His latest series of sculptures and furniture pieces are cut out of deconstructed dry wall. Carter’s site-specific exhibitions splice up pieces sourced from the gallery’s walls, leaving perfectly shaped holes that serve to document his process. One of his most recent installations, for example “Enigma of the Sublime” (2014), reconstructs Neo-classical sculptures that promote commercial building materials as a valuable medium. At his website, the artist explains, “The intent of this work is to promote a contextual shift from the inherent cheap and temporary state of building materials and elevate them to the status of fine art through their use.” The results are surprisingly colorful, as different types of dry wall vary from pale gray-purple or white on one side, to a darker gray or brown color on the other. It is also relatively impermanent, and reflects the artist’s interest in the sustainability of design while examining our relationship to what we build around ourselves. “Through the process of de-construction and re-constitution, I find meaning in the objects, architecture and the visual culture that surrounds me. Beyond the context and appearance of the world I attempt to develop new meanings, nurturing relationships between the viewer/user and the object or environments that we encounter,” he says.
