Brian Oakes
Display Case 1 (A Body), 2024
A wall mounted display case containing: ten homemade rubies, four wisdom teeth (courtesy of the artist), two shards of vivianite (sourced from a seller in Brazil who claims these were “hand selected from a graveyard”), a sculpture depicting a skull made of 20 AWG copper wire encased in a piezoelectric crystal (also known as Rochelle Salt or potassium sodium tartrate, characterized by their pyroelectricity property in which these growths can generate a temporary voltage when heated, cooled, or experience mechanical pressure), eight chunks of fordite (also known as Detroit Agate or Motor City Agate (which are formed from the buildup of thousands of layers of automotive paint slag on tracks and skids in auto plants) carved and tumbled into minimalist shapes, three Campo del Cielo meteorite fragments, two Prophecy Pseudomorphs (made up of hematite, whose name is derived from the Greek word for “blood”), a chunk of shungite and the selenite wand that protected its passage to the artist, a plastic army man in the throngs of a violent act cast in piezoelectric crystals (see above note), a small totem made of wax from dozens of Babybel 8.5oz cheese snack collected during (to be cast in zinc plated copper legs of every component clipped onto the floor of the artists studio between 2020 and 2024)
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