HEADS AND TAILS

Knoop’s, Heads and Tails, an installation of interactive sculptures referencing physical therapy devices, fashion accoutrements, prosthetics, and furniture, queer the power dynamic between human and object, and between maker and participant. Heads and Tails discursively makes connections between money and the binary, as enacted through the “heads” and “tails” of a coin. Knoop’s “heads” hang on the wall as personalized, wearable hats cast in solid iron; the “tails” are handmade wooden stools that become temporary appendages when sat upon. The sheer weight of the solid-wood sculptures require full engagement by the participant. Rocking back and forth, the person's body becomes a silhouette of symbolic transformation: forward into the biped of today, backwards towards the iterations of animal we evolved from. Dramatizing the ever vacillating separation between body and mind, these temporary appendages show humankind’s conception of homeostasis to be an unwieldy balancing act between control and submission to internal and external forces. Knoop offers a third interpretation— 3D printed coins hung in the liminal archways of the space. One, a cerulean blue cowrie shell the size of a hand; the other, a bronze coin of the artist’s silhouette connect the inception of money as a human story telling device that both forges human potentiality, as well as disconnects energy from it’s inherent value system. Knoop’s objects encourage a kind of physical experience, while providing connections that are oblique, overlapping, contingent, and, like the title, additive instead of oppositional.

Images shown below from Artist Curated Projects, LA, CA, 2017. Curated by Eve Fowler.

Text pulled from: Molly Larkey’s Review in Comtemporary Art Review La.