Politics

Politics is a sculpture made of solid steel bar powder-coated in gold. The piece stands almost eight feet in height and depicts two cart-like unicycle structures constructed to look like business suits with monkeys perched on the shoulders. The monkeys face each other screaming and pointing, their tails up and genitals down. The piece forms a stable arch while implying instability in their precarious balance on single wheels. The simultaneity of unified balanced structure and hostile instability speaks to the nature of political discourse throughout human history. 

The sculpture was influenced by Aristophanes play  The Clouds written in 423 B.C.E. In the play, two golden chariots with sophistry and philosophy face off in a debate.   

The shiny gold wheeled structures represent money, power and ego just as the suits represent business-like respectability; yet, the drivers of these golden suited chariots remain primates devoid of social propriety. The opposing images of respectability and depravity are compositionally unified through bilateral symmetry and the mirrored shapes of curved monkey tails reflected in the curved legs of the carts they drive. 

I leave the viewer to draw parallels to contemporary politics.