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Hypergienics, Hadrian Pigott's first major London show since Young British Artists V at the Saatchi Gallery is a culmination of his investigation of the fetishism of domestic manias and the associated lunacy of consumer choice, the social implications of consumption, waste, fashion and taste.
A set of beautiful, matching, flesh-coloured musical instrument type cases on the floor of the gallery represent the ultimate in pure desire, the obsessional neurotic's dream. Totally devoid of function, these metamorphic fantasy objects bear the stylised outline of the humble domestic appliances they might contain (a sink, a vacuum cleaner, an iron, a floor polisher). In these sculptures, Pigott has created products of and for the end of the twentieth Century - over sexed, glossy, utopic. Like mid 90's Japanese versions of 1950's American design, these objects exude consumer confidence in their dysfunctional glamour.
Negotiated from a distance as pictorial pattern, New York - London - Paris reveals itself on closer inspection as one hundred and forty different types of toilet paper selected from the three consumer capitals. The work is both a celebration and critique of personal choice and the quest for individuality, and a revelation in terms of national differences. Quilted scented embossed white is the preferred choice in Manhattan, standard white and five pastels for the most part in London, a preponderance of pinks, floral prints and crazy purples in Paris....
Hypergienics also includes the first London screening of Pigott's film dream, a dream turned nightmare where the act of hand washing drifts into an intimate activity of a rather different sort - a strange twist or response to the anthropomorphism built into products in the name of ergonomics.