Enormous Everyday Objects

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen creates monumental sculptures of non-monumental objects. They take everyday items such as household tools, office supplies and recreational products and blow them up in order to make people view them in a different way. Impressively realistic, these two artists show that there is beauty even in the most mundane of things, highlighting details that would normally be overlooked.

Based in Los Angeles, California, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen also show what it is like for two artists to come together for such an expansive project. Bruggen observes, “Working together supposes an almost complete understanding of the other, an impossibility in any case, so instead we choose a unity of opposites, a convergence of our different dynamics, of symmetry and asymmetry, of acceleration or implied speed and stillness, of a polychrome and monochrome palette, gravity and lightness—all interrelating and interchangeable elements to be used by either one of us.”