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...with toys. The ceiling had vanished behind an efflorescence of toys which hung from it like marvelous stalactites. On doe floor was hardly a narrow catwalk to place one's feet upon. It was a whole world of toys. [I]
**********
As in Baudelaire's early recollection of his encounter with the strikingly dressed woman, there is a kind of simple magic that greets a visitor to a Laura Kikauka installation: the frosty frisson of late modernism is supplanted by a playfulness so universally engaging that it throws the sophisticate, while it charms the child. Follow me into Exactly the Same, but Completely Different, Kikauka's 2002 installation at the Power Plant, in Toronto.
Other people are laughing involuntarily as they enter, laughing at the shoes on the wall with lamps in them; there is something to see with wonder everywhere. A small child enters the exhibition, accompanied by her mother. It is patently clear from the get-go which one of them is driving their pathway through the show. The daughter is transported from the first moment by a tumbling succession of quirky and colourful teases:
a pipe-cleaner doll with googly eyes
a cascading fringe of nylon stockings
a pair of slippers, each containing a large plastic ear
everywhere an impasto of feathers, baubles, beads, bangles, sequins
lamps made of a pair of shoes with Halloween fingers protruding through the open toes, where candelabra bulbs flicker
a tiny pair of sandals, also lamps, with bulbs protruding where legs should be
packages upon packages of nylon stockings, tights and pantyhose, with advertising images of ladies in states of undress posing, waving their legs
a sign reading COME IN, WE ARE CLOSED
a row of suspended plush animals
an acupuncture chart for feet
a fuzzy pink lamp, formed of pink gloves and pink shoes
a queen-of-the-fairies doll
a plastic ice-cream cone
a toy toilet
plastic fruit and toy kitchen products insoles made from some kind of felt or fuzz that's spilling out everywhere
a small plastic wrestler doll
everything, everything glued and encrusted googly eyeballs
a small plastic monkey fart gags
a photo of Kikauka herself in her hyacinth garden, in a frame of silk flowers
a little fabric box with a necklace hanging in it
flowery, vivid, colourful, clashing wallpaper everywhere behind everything
a small translucent shoe, of Lucite; too small for anybody
a chair completely covered with shaggy pink fake fur
a bizarre appropriated portrait painting of a man whose eyes have been replaced by winking lights
a typesetter's box loaded with a hundred or more assorted electronic objects, such as batteries, capacitors, disconnected connectors, springs, mystery electronic parts and robot dolls
another box, in the shape of a house, containing a collection of tiny, tiny plastic TV sets and other miniature household items and appliances
the ceiling, papered with lightbulb containers
photos of even more densely impacted spaces from Kikauka's past--framed by fringes of plastic seahorses, by pompom tufts in aqua, by spangles and fringe in violet, pink and orange
a shelf covered with contact-paper images of piles of fruit
lamps formed from old lightbulbs, enmeshed in skeins of silicone glue and many small objects
a lamp that appears to have been eaten by a plastic fish
a lamp that looks like a tiny throne of orange pompom puffs
a lamp that rises on a stalk of chicken feet, with a base made of a dozen plastic pistols
a little model house with a peephole that, Alice in Wonderland-like, reads LOOK--and inside, a miniature illuminated scene
on the ceiling, many old-fashioned artsy shots of naked women with flowers, statuary, tall vases and fruit
cockeyed shelves full of dog pictures and leprechauns
kewpie dolls and rustic Swiss chalets, set with homey German doggerel
plates enhanced with pink pompoms
a dangling plastic chicken foot glued together with a skein of plastic tendrils and plastic fruit, plastic animals and plastic straws
a shelf lined with pompom balls and fuzzy fringe on a glistening purple, diffraction-grating settee table
a green cloth snake
the orange room
a sign that reads ORANGE YOU GLAD
a row of flickering and flashing custom-built electronic units
electronic lips that talk
a bottle filled with something that I can't even identify
encrustations of beads and rhinestones
a sign at the base of a lamp that reads UGLY in big fuzzy letters
another lamp that reads PRETTY
a pack of Edison cigarettes
fuzzy white globs of cloth pasted with googly animal eyes
a kitschy...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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