Kendrick Lee-Utensils of Life

Student Name: Kendrick Lee

Title: Utensils of Life

Work type: sculpture(clay fake teeth, acrylic)

Category: fine art/3D

Size: 15x9

There is a history of fine art sculptures that use utensils, including sculptures made from silverware and decorative, non-functional utensils designed as nonfunctional. Kendrick Lee creates a sculptural artwork that is surreal and encompasses the idea of utility, consumerism and our mortality among other complex ideas. The work has humor, eroticism, and psychological aspects, exploring themes of identity. It subverts the utility of the object we are most familiar with exposing the inward body with outside items with parts of the human body spliced and manipulated into common goods that are used for nourishment.

At the time of this concept Kendrick was unaware of the work by a surrealist in the 1930’s. You can say the work can be compared with Méret Oppenheim's surreal sculpture titled Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) 1936, which consists of a fur-covered teacup, saucer, and spoon. Using the pelt of a Chinese gazelle she covered a cup and saucer with fur to negate and render the object useless. This work was produced by Oppenheim when Picasso joked with her about wearing a fur covered bracelet she made. Picasso said to her anything can be covered in fur. The idea of something we employ with utility, symbolism, status, and other Signiant relevancies questioning normalcy with ideological and cultural expectations of touch versus taste can bring the viewer into contemplating an inner dialogue.

Both these works create tension from the familiar, comfort and a domestic use that is used to sustain us especially as it goes into our mouths with intimacy. Kendrick understands the element of depiction and exposing our most vulnerable parts used as something that sustains us, now is destabilized with the disturbing visual, scale and tangibility and familiarity.

（By Omar Gallegos）