Icarus Bound, 2010
black polyethylene stretch film wrapped around the
wings of Charles Umlauf's Icarus
The title plaque bears this inscription:
"A symbol evolved from modern interpretation of Greek mythology representing the willingness of mankind to experiment and to venture into the unknown, even though such quests may be dangerous."
This represents, to my mind, a perilous misreading of the myth (incidentally, the Phillips Petroleum Company donated this bronze sculpture to the University of Kansas). Spurred by both this and the Gulf oil spill, my guerrilla installation sought to show our interdependence with the Earth and all of its creatures. By taking an icon of oil spills--the oil-soaked bird--and combining that with the human form, this work alludes to the notion that whatever we do unto the least of the Earth, we do unto ourselves.
