Winter Garbage Chunks

China Adams
"Winter Garbage Chunks", 2008
Plaster, assorted garbage, notarized document
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Collection
Gift of the artist
2017.07

China Adams finds inspiration in the ambiguous distinctions we create between documentation and artwork. In the case of Winter Garbage Chunks her viewers are invited to develop a more complex idea of the piece after they have realized that it includes both the freestanding white ‘chunks’ and the framed form that hangs on the wall nearby. Typed, signed, and notarized, the document goes to a lot of trouble to formalize information that most artists allow to remain unstated: the fact that the artwork in front of us is a record of a specific period of time, and that it incorporates a series of actions and decisions on the part of the person who created it. The text also reveals a physical aspect of the sculptures that would otherwise remain hidden—the nature of the material that gives them their bulk. (DKS)

Item Description:
A sculpture composed of twelve roughly rounded white, boulderlike forms arranged on the floor in a group.