Redo it Yourself // Interpretive Essay by Randy Grskovic
Heather Maxwell combines the practical with the absurd. Her work consists of hybrid structures that create a common ground between architecture and sculpture. The ‘dysfunctional’ architecture creates a space within the gallery space that distorts the gallery’s construction and function.
Despite the pristine but unusual formal qualities foremost in her work, Maxwell’s conjunction of common building materials with impractical domestic construction allows a unique dialogue with the viewer. By creating a variation of the practical and normal, Maxwell challenges viewers to question their immediate surroundings. Maxwell’s structures expose hidden aspects of the rooms construction, allowing viewers to consider new facets of the building’s original design.
Maxwell highlights the pervasive influence of architecture on our social patterns. Architecture, like art, is the physical manifestation of specific thoughts and ideologies. It serves as a reminder of past thought and experience yet it also shapes our daily interactions. Maxwell engages the viewer by altering the original space and highlights the constructs in which we spend our lives. While our culture has formed these spaces, Maxwell suggests that these spaces in turn form us.
Contemporary North American society has an obsession with personalizing habitats through home décor. With popular home redecoration television programs and the emergence of Feng Shui, Maxwell’s work is poignant in considering how we externalize our beliefs through buildings in which we live and work. The home is seen as a reflection of lifestyle, philosophy and identity. Maxwell’s personality and aesthetic concerns are apparent in her architectural installations. Her atheistic choices are similar to those that could be made in decorating a home, but they go further into what could be described as absurd.
While awkward in appearance and complex in thought, Maxwell’s installations subtly encourage us to be critical builders and thinkers.
Heather Maxwell