THE SCULPTURE:
Michael Zelehoski’s Plywood Protection Project proposes a new kind of public monument, one that represents all people, not just the political and economic elite. The artist uses plywood salvaged from storefronts boarded up during the Black Lives Matter protests to reexamine Egyptian obelisks, which were traditionally raised in pairs in keeping with the Egyptian values of balance and harmony. The divine feminine and masculine, darkness and light, were represented equally, side by side, whereas a single obelisk, such as the Washington Monument has come to represent white, male hegemony.
The obelisk in Central Park is actually one of two, separated by its sister monolith by thousands of miles. In uniting two in this sculpture, Zelehoski seeks to reclaim the symbol and propose a reconciliation of extremes. The two obelisks come together to form a caltrop, a spiked, metal object that protestors have traditionally thrown in the path of oncoming cop cars. The artist's first encounter with caltrops, or "Miguelitos" as they're called in Chile, was during protests against Pinochet and then President Bush's foreign policy. He and fellow sculptors twisted hundreds of nails into caltrops to thuart oncoming authorities. Two decades later, participating in Black Lives Matter protests around Manhattan and Brooklyn – many culminating in McCarren park – he was reminded of these caltrops and how protest can be a powerful force for socio-political reconciliation.
The artist considers this to be a collaborative piece – between himself and everyone who tagged the boarded up storefronts of New York, everyone who participated in the protests, everyone who supports universal human rights.
Click here to see the rest of the Plywood Protection Project sculptures.
Michael Zelehoski.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Michael Zelehoski lives and works in Newburgh and Brooklyn, New York. His work involves the literal collapse of three-dimensional objects and structures into two-dimensional space. He disassembles found objects and cuts them into hundreds of abstract fragments before incorporating them into the picture plane. He holds degrees from Bard College and Universidad Finis Terrae in Chile. Zelehoski’s work resides in private and public collections around the world, most notably the Musée National d'Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include All of This and Nothing at Tang Contemporary, Beijing, Things Fall Apart at Backslash, Paris, France and New Order at Mike Weiss Gallery, New York.