Artwork Description
Rusty Scruby – Happy Meal
Dimensions: 42 x 35 x 2″ unframed
Year: 2012
Medium: photographic reconstruction
Rusty Scruby’s work, Happy Meal, is an example of his Cherry Blossom style, where the piece has been constructed of an image now stripped of many of its distinct, formal elements into a compilation of pixelated colors. Scruby establishes a sense of tension within the work by introducing a title that evokes a specific object and then removing the visual cues that allow viewers to recognize the McDonald’s product—resulting in frequent attempts to find form within the three-dimensional formlessness. In this way, Scruby also elevates fast food into a high art form by artistically redefining its otherwise abject qualities.
In his photographic and sculptural pieces, Rusty Scruby explores the way images can provide a visual and structural basis for three-dimensional works. Rather than remaining limited to the flatness of a more traditional picture plane, Scruby manipulates photographs through techniques seen in knitting and geometry in a way that renders the images into intricate, interwoven constructions. Scruby describes, “The idea that a 2-D image could translate into multiple 3-D structures reinforces that an image can be subordinated into merely a symbol, a vessel for information”. In some pieces, the image informing the work is more easily recognized, whereas in others the subject matter has been distorted almost to the point of abstraction; Scruby’s work in the Turner Carroll show can be divided into his Cube Network and Cherry Blossom pieces, named for their respective addition or loss of visual information. In his Cherry Blossom work, Scruby uses a technique that pixelates his images by reducing them to the summation of their individual colors, while his Cube Network pieces establish a ‘visual frequency’ by compressing information into a constructive pattern.
by Keira Seidenberg