The American artist Robert Therrien died earlier this week. He was 71 years old.
Therrien is best known for his amusing sculptures of functional, mass-produced objects from everyday life that are enlarged to a scale that fills a room. Surely, his work is reminiscent of Pop Art in that it comments upon consumerism and manufactured goods. But there is a seriousness in examining the emotional connection we have to such objects when we see them in this huge format. The things that help us live our lives attain a power in Therrien’s monumental sculptures that is both unsettling and nostalgic.
