AutoPlastic: Wendell Castle (1968-1973)

Text by Donald Albrecht

AutoPlastic: Wendell Castle (1968-1973) accompanied R & Company’s exhibition of the same name, curated by Donald Albrecht and on view at the gallery’s 82 Franklin location from April 20 to June 15, 2004.

AutoPlastic situates Wendell Castle’s plastic furniture in the context of late 1960s and early 1970s design innovations and examines, through a selection of photographs, magazine clippings, and ephemera, the relationship between the objects and their era’s social and cultural concerns. With natural, primitive, archaic, and womb-like forms, Castle’s plastic objects recall a time when novelty and fantasy were a means of individual expression (“doing your own thing”). They also highlight how environmentalism (“going back to the earth”) and escapism (“getting away from it all”) were intense reactions to the upheaval of America’s shifting values, student protests, race riots, assassinations, and the war in Vietnam.

The AutoPlastic: Wendell Castle (1968-1973) catalog was designed by Lisa Steinmeyer with photographs by Eva Heyd.

PURCHASE

Publisher: R & Company
Release date: 2004
Format: Softcover
Dimensions: 8.5 x 8.5”
Pages: 28
OCLC: 71324869