Mark Klassen
Combustible Dust
Past Exhibition
January 25–March 29, 2020
MOWA | West Bend
About the Exhibition
January 25–March 29, 2020
MOWA | West Bend
If appearances are deceiving in Mark Klassen’s work, it’s only because appearances are deceiving in everyday life.
The air-conditioning unit that makes the sultry summer tolerable also wreaks environmental havoc. To encounter such an object—or a picture-perfect wooden replica—in a museum setting is sufficiently strange to change what viewers notice in their day-to-day lives. Klassen’s deceptive sculptures transform banal objects—an air-conditioning unit, driver’s license, and water-squirting prank flower—into larger-than-life works of art that call attention to the things that make modern society possible and occasionally perilous.