Framed by steel I-beams, aluminum cladding, or floor boards, ’s chaotic dioramas appear ready to burst from their own confines. Made from everyday materials like cardboard, tinfoil, wire, and epoxy clay, his sculptures capture harried moments of disarray seemingly frozen in time.
In the artist’s current solo exhibition, Under the Floorboards at , the sculptures jump off the wall, angles jutting this way and that. Beams intersect with appliances; floor boards bend; stairways emerge from nowhere and terminate in open space; and radiator steam infiltrates everything in its path.
Monaghan draws on the work of 20th-century underground legends like cartoonist R. Crumb or clay animator Bruce Bickford. In the artist’s three-dimensional scenes, tiny figures sometimes emerge comically half-concealed, sometimes grappling with the situation at hand and sometimes simply swept up in the action.
He embraces unpredictability and farce, playfully examining the relationships between stability, movement, time, and a sense of control. In “Stages,” for example, a series of platforms and rooms shift around in a puzzle-like arrangement, with one figure apparently taken by surprise by a steel beam, another crawling behind a curtain, and yet another passed out on a sofa while helping to “pull the strings” of the entire uncanny production.
Under the Floorboards continues through March 29 in Los Angeles. Find more on the artist’s .
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