simon anton at m contemporary
Plastic Future / Plastic Past
"Plastic Future / Plastic Past" explores the layered, turbulent, and transformational history of Detroit through the lens of plasticity - both as material and metaphor. Rooted in the artist Simon Anton’s background in architecture, material design, and sculpture, this body of work investigates how the city’s architectural ornamentation, industrial legacies, and cultural narratives can be reinterpreted through experimental processes using recycled plastics.”
Pulled from some of Detroit’s most iconic buildings’ architectural embellishments, lines of unevenly applied melted plastic form into highly textural symmetry. The seemingly weightless pieces appear to hover and drift along the gallery walls.
Blue plastic flecks contribute to Mayan Pacific Masonry’s undulating waterlike waves. Cast shadows and the incorporation of black prevent these pieces from vanishing into the white background.
Conspicuous due to its dominating black, O Karamba combines geometry with expression allowing irregularities to disclose the maker’s hand.
This diptych’s graphical, balanced shape is the most ‘arty’ of all the offerings. Anton has blended multiple colors into his repurposed concoction resulting in something that reads like candy rather than sculpture. (you eat it, you bought it)
This is a decidedly quiet exhibition taking ornamental details designed to be noticed to a visual whisper. Anton reimagines discarded plastics in a more creative and far less destructive afterlife than floating in a Texas-sized waste island in the Pacific.
On view through July 12th at M Contemporary 205 E Nine Mile, Ferndale
*all images CJ Benninger unless otherwise noted
direct quote from gallery materials
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