Brian Jungen is a Canadian artist of mixed European and Native background. He often uses everyday objects such as sporting goods, shoes and luggage to create new versions of iconic cultural objects, such as Native American masks, totem poles and fossil skeletons. This piece, Shapeshifter (2000), is one of a series of monumental whale skeleton sculptures made of cheap acrylic lawn chairs.
Besides the simple “wow” factor of this work – its gigantic size (almost 22 feet long) and virtuoso handling of the nontraditional materials – the whale skeleton has pathos. Much of Jungen’s work comments on the corrosive effect of mass-produced goods on traditional societies. By taking something useful and functional (a plastic chair) and turning it into something “useless” – a museum piece – it can make the viewer wonder whether we feel the same way about many elements of traditional cultures.
More about Brian Jungen here.
The Finch and Pea 
This is the kind of art I really LOVE – using found materials to make something beautiful, but also to express something deeply emotional and meaningful! =D
nice article here loved itAre we allowed to email this to our list
Unless noted otherwise, all original content at The Finch & Pea is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Provided your email list is not a commercial venture (eg, does not incorporate ads for businesses), that you provide proper attribution to the creators of the content (including links to original source where applicable), and clearly state that the content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (ie, copyright is retained by the creator and content may not be distributed under different licensing terms), you are free to make creative use of our content.