"One Man's Treasure(Piggy Bank Series)" 2025
I've been fascinated with garbage trucks ever since I visited NYC for the first time as a college student in the late 1980's. I thought it was amazing that a city that was so dirty (at that time anyway) with multiple streets with blue garbage bags on them could have so many garbage trucks. The remind me of the giant isopods (cockroach like sea creatures) that pick apart corpses of fish and other things on the bottom of the ocean. I picked up this thread recently and started looking at the similarity that the back of the truck has to the back of a human skull. In combining these two, I chose an Australopithecine (proto human) skull due to its primitive elongagted shape. I chose this since having an argument with an anti-evolution family member and thought that his behavior mimicked the anti-science rage we've been experiencing in this country. Ironically, our resident 'strong-man' had a photo op in a similar garbage truck which I thought was just another piece of synchronicity appearing in the universe.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Kyle Fokken
Sculptor
I am a mixed media sculptor who combines diverse imagery into hybrid sculptures that explore cultural contexts between people.
I use vintage toy and ‘folk art’ aesthetics to explore the passing down of cultural values between generations. I make artwork that tantalizes the eye and invites the audience to linger and look deeper at the work and reflect on what we believe about ourselves.