These Incredible Paintings Were Made By Injecting Paint into Bubble Wrap.
The only reason why bubble wrap exists is so that people can pop them. That’s a universal fact. So color me surprised when I found out another thing you can do with bubble wrap: make art. Bradley Hart injected bubble wrap with paint to create these wonderful portraits.
When you first stare at these pieces from afar, you’re not really sure how they’re made. Are they woven together? Is it a mosaic? It kind of looks like tiles. But then when you look closer, you can see that each bubble of the bubble wrap is treated like a pixel. Each paint bubble shapes a bigger picture. Seeing art in objects you never thought could become art is always a mind warp. Now I’m going to look at every piece of bubble wrap as a canvas and wonder what it could be. Then I’ll pop it. Every. Single. Bubble. (As an aside, I wonder what the Hart’s art would look like if you popped ’em all!)
Bradley Hart’s Injection series can be seen at gallery nine5 in New York until March 29th. [Bradley Hart via Visual News]
FASHIONBLOGGA 
Seemed like a cool idea until I read the artist statement! hahaha…
“To create the Bubble Wrap pieces I inject each bubble individually with acrylic paint, acutely aware of the exchange between paint and the air inside as one of those two elements displaces the other. As the paint is injected into a bubble the excess drips down the back of the piece. Upon completion of the injected work, the drippings are removed surgically from the backside of the plastic to reveal an impression of the work — a derivative work with its own meaning and story. Viewed together, the pieces each seem to engage the other and the viewer becomes an observer of a relationship created between the two.”
I couldn’t read anymore past that. Ok…Is that a class in art school where you learn to take some kind of everyday craft and try to spin it into some kind of life changing experience? I’d love to see how he describes finger-painting. “…acutely aware of the exchange between paint and air…” that is f**king poetic!
I was digging it at first until I read the artist statement and realized the artist is completely full of shit. Cool concept and in fact I might be tempted to steal it if not for the fact that it’s probably insanely expensive to spend all day filling plastic bubbles with acrylic paint, which further just cements that this is probably just a rich hipster who’s parents are funding his voyage of self discovery and the study of the self-awareness of bubble wrap.
Well that and the fact one of his “works” is that of Steve Jobs. I take any kind of iWorship to be a sign of low intelligence and IQ. I have nothing against someone who uses an iMac but you know what I mean…those people who think Apple products are crafted by the hand of God himself and handed to Steve Jobs in a divine transference and think the world with be much better if it was just a conflagration of cold, solid white plastic with nothing but an on/off button and the inability to change batteries. Spending all day injecting plastic bubbles with paint to create an effigy of Steve Jobs…well, make of that what you will.
I know I usually write positive stuff but I also have a very low tolerance for BS. Which as you can imagine doesn’t go over well either with my musician friends! Hahaha…. Great concept completely ruined by the fact that the artist sounds like 10 pounds of bullshit stuffed into a 5 pound bag. Or is that 4.5kg of bullshit stuffed into a 2.2kg bag for you?
Of course that doesn’t change the fact that if I find myself with some extra cash lying around and some bubble wrap I will definitely make a bubble wrap portrait of you.
And I’ll make sure to pay explicit attention to the exchange between paint and air…
Xoxo,
Frankie
Dear Frankie,
first of all, please know that I always value your opinion – positive or negative.
Now although I totally agree with you on the artist statement, I’m gonna cut some slack for this guy. You see, sometimes we artists (including other arts such as music) come up with our best ideas randomly and quite unglamorously. I can see this particular artist telling his agent: “How I came up with the idea? Well you know I was unpacking a box with a shipment of paint and one bottle had broken open. You see the bubble wrap was all messed up and I threw it in the trash, but then the next day I happened to look inside the bin and it had dried into a cool pattern. So I decided to go with the flow!” Or anything else of that sort.
But no artist is allowed to tell the truth. You are always expected to have some GRAND inspiration, a DEEP vision and this is how these terrible “artist statements” are born…..Clearly this guy could benefit from a good public relations consultant.
But I do agree with you on the bubble’s content. Steve Jobs, urm – yes.
Sincerely,
your Fashionblogga