Room 1510
Modern and Contemporary Art
Disrupt the View: Arlene Shechet at the Harvard Art Museums

German artist Andreas Slominski is best known for his often humorous investigations of strategy and efficiency, but also mortality. Ever since he was inspired by the sculptural quality of a vole trap in the early 1980s, the artist has made traps a staple of his practice—so much so that he is referred to as the Fallensteller, the setter of traps, snares, and pranks. Slominski’s sculptures are elaborate constructions made of banal, everyday objects. Each work is “set” as if to catch something: from the quotidian mouse, bird, or slug to rarer creatures such as an ermine or, as seen at the center of this gallery, a mongoose. The prey’s unique characteristics inspire the work’s design. Mongoose Trap holds sausage in its mechanism, for instance, because mongooses are carnivores, and Waxwing Trap hopes to attract the songbirds with its ripe red berries.Perfectly functional and yet wholly absurd, the trap is a prank, “catching” the viewer in a conceptual thought experiment. Slominski’s works stand in suspended tension, both literally and figuratively. They challenge what we understand sculpture to be, especially within the space of the museum, where signs explicitly tell us “do not touch.” The result is a formally eclectic series that the artist continues to elaborate on to this day, with works that encourage us to remain vigilant as wewalk the line between death and desire.