Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Randy Hage Miniaturizes Fading Storefronts in “Facade”

Randy Hage caught our attention earlier this year for his stunning mixed-media miniatures of New York, which he then photographs. You may find yourself giving his work a second and third take, even after discovering its true size, with most pieces measuring at 1/12th scale. Working primarily in wood, plastic, resin and metal, Hage draws upon the disciplines of his formative years as a prop maker in the TV/Film industry. What began as an experiment in miniaturizing local structures, particularly cast iron buildings, has turned into what he calls a "documentary project." He will exhibit his latest series in his exhibition "Facade", opening at Flower Pepper Gallery in Los Angeles on October 10th.

Randy Hage caught our attention earlier this year for his stunning mixed-media miniatures of New York, which he then photographs. You may find yourself giving his work a second and third take, even after discovering its true size, with most pieces measuring at 1/12th scale. Working primarily in wood, plastic, resin and metal, Hage draws upon the disciplines of his formative years as a prop maker in the TV/Film industry. What began as an experiment in miniaturizing local structures, particularly cast iron buildings, has turned into what he calls a “documentary project.” He will exhibit his latest series in his exhibition “Facade”, opening at Flower Pepper Gallery in Los Angeles on October 10th. Each piece is hyper-realistically modeled after an actual facade, down to their hand-painted signs and graffiti tags, and in doing so, Hage documents each one before it gets torn down. He averages that about 60% of the buildings that he documents go out of business. “Knowing the intimate details of a structure, understanding the decay and what it went through, the rehabs, the people who owned the building and the business, that intimacy gives me a closeness with New York,” Hage says. “It’s kind of like when someone tells you a secret.”

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Kate MccGwire’s anthropomorphic pieces exude a naturally sourced beauty as they writhe and loom in place. Much of her sculptural and installation work uses materials from the animal world, like pheasant and crow feathers, to create something new entirely. The British sculptor uses a dozen verbs to describe what she does: "I gather, collate, re-use, layer, peel, burn, reveal, locate, question, duplicate, play and photograph."
For San Francisco based artist Erika Sanada, animals have long represented a sort of escapism from reality. Featured here on our blog and in Hi-Fructose Vol. 31, her creepy-cute sculptural incarnations of "zombified" baby creatures are analogies to her own demons. Over the years, we've seen her sculptures evolve into more dynamic pieces of art; playful, narrative scenes colored in a spectrum of somber hues. She explores a bolder, darker palette and decoration in her upcoming solo, "Cope."
New York sculptor Joe Reginella has fooled countless tourists with his statues scattered across the city, marking events that never actually happened. From a Staten Island Ferry encounter with an octopus to a New York Harbor UFO encounter, the artist’s scenarios use the convincing device of the memorial statue to relay his narratives.
In his ongoing project "Cement Eclipses", Issac Cordal takes an unconventional approach to observing our behavior as a social mass. His alluring and surprising miniature cement figures placed in public locations, featured in our new issue and here on our blog over the years, reveal scenes that zoom in the routine tasks of the contemporary human being. The Spanish artist describes his work as "quickly opening doors to other worlds", often where the "unwelcome" or unfortunate are welcoming the viewer to consider the issues that face the real world.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List