by Mac Tonnies
[Don't you hate snobbish, condescending reviews of imbecilic conceptual "art"? So do I. "Pencil Protruding Through Piece of Styrofoam" is a hypothetical piece of concept art, and the review below is an exercise in sarcasm. For Zakas' online multimedia treatment of "Pencil Protruding Through Piece of Styrofoam," click here.]
In this piece, the artist experiments with the juxtaposition of forms, quietly but forcibly indulging in the variance of texture and resilience than define his chosen media. The viewer wonders if the pencil's conspicuous penetration is meant to conjure Freudian or carnal implications. The soft, yielding rectangle of Styrofoam can be viewed as a Euclidian permutation of feminine libido. That the rectangle is composed of a quintessentially synthetic 20th century medium implies a postmodern, or at least postindustrial, dialogue between pencil and Styrofoam, bringing to mind a century of gender roles and "erotic politics."
As a potential phallic device, the pencil (emerging from the Styrofoam's tabla rassa eraser-end first in an invitation to literally erase or deconstruct the work as a whole) inflicts vicarious physical discomfort. Why, specifically, a pencil (made out of the quasi-archaic medium of wood) when a ballpoint pen or computer stylus would have maintained or augmented the Styrofoam's sense of sterile modernity? Perhaps this is a deliberate anachronism designed to express gender conflict not merely in the "Age of Plastic," but throughout human history.
"Pencil Protruding Through Piece of Styrofoam" is a stark, provocative piece of modernist expression whose ambiguity takes on enhanced nuances upon repeated meditation.