Celestial Tower

Subject Matter:

Detroit-based artist Matthew Angelo Harrison’s experiences working at Ford Motor Company, where he made clay prototypes for cars and automotive parts, inform and inspire his practice. He builds his own specialized machinery and uses it to encapsulate personal memorabilia, wooden sculptures, or ephemera of the Detroit auto industry into blocks of acrylic resin.

In Celestial Towers, Harrison immerses a monumental wooden mask from the Dogon of Mali in resin to create an entirely new visual representation that raises questions about the politics of mass production, authenticity, and the extraction, fragmentation, and disintegration of culture. By stripping down and re-contextualizing the mask, Harrison offers a commentary on the troubled history of African artworks circulating in our economy and museums and how they are severed from their locations of origin. Harrison purposely seeks out sculptures and masks made for sale, which have been discarded by collectors and museums alike as “inauthentic.”

Harrison says, "I like to play with the idea of the archive, with longevity and perpetuity. My resin encapsulations take wooden sculptures targeting the tourist trade­­—in other words, semi-disposable momentos—and give them a lasting platform, a stage to mean more, like a dragonfly caught in amber."

Physical Description:

A wooden mask encased in transparent resin. 

Usage Rights:

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