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Tse’s process introduces human attributes and gestures to mass-produced objects. Color, for example, is a key component in Tse’s selection of Styrofoam. She has often utilized peachy, beige-toned plastics in her work to make reference to flesh and bodily cavities. In Camping at the Lab (2003), diminutive pieces of pale green Styrofoam are suspended in midair with plastic tent tubing, appearing to circulate kinetically through space. Hardly a hue associated with lush, verdant outdoor scenery, the synthetic quality of this particular shade of green seems almost toxic, like artificial turf, or an industrially-designed landscape. Further underscoring this point, Tse carved a biohazard symbol on the side of a personal-cooler-sized container, suggesting an uneasy intermingling between recreational activities and the stamp of culture. With a certain ironic charm, she gives renewed vitality to an inert substance that has “outlived” its usefulness, and treats the material itself as a tableau onto which she imprints her intricate complex carvings.
Jason Rogenes also utilizes Styrofoam as the “raw matter” from which he constructs large-scale fantastical objects that blur the boundaries between sculpture, architecture and installation. Rogenes masterfully transforms mundane materials including Styrofoam, electrical tape, power cords, and fluorescent bulbs into slick, substantive (and even ominous) creations. The intricate patterns and pre-cut forms of ordinary packing material used to protect, for example, televisions and computers, take on a decidedly hi-tech aesthetic that reference circuit boards and alien spacecraft. Employing an economical approach that is also made visible, Rogenes uses electrical cord to string together countless pieces of Styrofoam and inserts rudimentary lighting to enhance a piece’s ethereal, otherworldly aura. His suspended, seemingly weightless crafts borrow from sources such as science fiction and NASA. Yet despite their recognizable parts, Rogenes re-contextualizes familiar cast-off materials into confounding hybrid forms.