Kevin Yates: Flash Gordon and the Sculpture of Disaster
Kevin Yates Pearl Street 2008
In his show “HOT HAIL” artist Kevin Yates embarks on a wild sculptural ride with reference to the 1980 sci-fi movie Flash Gordon, which valiantly tried to revamp the 1930s radio hero for postmodern audiences. The villain in the movie was a character called Ming who kept a set of natural disaster buttons at his fingertips, ready to trigger tornados, droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, meteor storms, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. Watching the film as a child, Yates thought of the disasters as pure fantasy, then grew into an adulthood where tsunamis are real and the world is imperilled by climate change. For his show, the artist has created detailed miniature objects that stand as “mementos from the end of the world,” an imaginary end that has become uncomfortably near. (137 Tecumseth St, Toronto ON)
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Kevin Yates Untitled 2008 |
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Kevin Yates Billboard 2008 |
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