Lars Fisk will present Trashcan, (2006), a single, life-size standard garbage can carved from Vermont-quarried “Imperial Danby” marble. Dented on one side, as if through years of harsh use, and gloriously preserved on the other, the can stands like a battered-but-unbowed fluted Greek column—an unearthed symbol of the ideal and eternal in architecture, government and art. Trashcan is simultaneously cute, formal and something entirely more sinister. Its pudgy little handles look positively doughy while it evokes the reverent presence of a Brancusi, and its angularity recalls Fascist interpretations of Classical idioms.

Fisk’s work has often explored the intersection of architecture and sculpture with a particular eye for lasting, steadfast design. From McDonalds’ architecture to locomotives, to automobiles, to furnishings, Fisk’s work explores the quintessential and the iconic. The artist gives the lowly, galvanized steel trashcan the royal treatment as a form relatively unchanged throughout history—a triumph of design perseverance. The marble chips and dust produced by the carving fill Trashcan and spill out onto the floor. Standing amid the refuse of its own creation, the sculpture becomes a self-cannibalizing and self-contained monument to process, while issuing a tart commentary on art world excess.

A 2005 graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, Fisk was recently included in Greater New York at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center as well as in group exhibitions at Anthony Grant, Inc. and Socrates Sculpture Park where he was an Artist in Residence in 2001. In 2002, Fisk was an Artist in Residence at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY, and he also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He had solo exhibitions at The Firehouse Center for the Visual Arts in Burlington, Vermont in 2002 and 2003. This is Lars’ second solo exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann.