“Streaming: Sculpture by Christy Rupp” in the Fairfield University Art Museum’s Quick Center Marsh Gallery is a must see. Artists that work with recycled trash as their medium will witness a master’s hand with detritus and see work deeply endowed with the informed passion of a citizen scientist.
As you enter, there is an all-consuming 30’ by 40’ stock photo on the largest gallery wall. It is like an IMAX image of mountains of plastic to the horizon without a hint of the earth beneath. Rupp uses this image to attach her “Petroplankton,” imaginative sculptural enlargements of micro-organisms at the bottom of the food chain, already compromised with micro-plastics.
Composed of steel and single-use plastic, each of these 27 microbe objects is cleverly hidden in the wasteland. They have names like “Black Pipes,” “Drive Case,” “Floss Blue” and “Computer Board.” Wordplay is a tool Rupp uses to engage. This group name is based on the word phytoplankton, replacing “phyto” with “petro.” It is a series she calls “Moby Debris.”
Welcome to Rupp’s visualization of the problem of species caught in the crosshairs of survival.
The Marsh Gallery houses a tour-de-force selection of Rupp’s work that is as esthetically astonishing as it is activist charged. The exhibition’s catalog lists 78 works created from 2007 through 2023. There is potential dissonance when an artist uses trash to deplore trash. Rupp’s works surmount this difficulty. Each delivers a deep message via a beautifully conceived messenger.
Mastery in felting, encaustic modeling, sculpting with steel and chicken bones, assemblage with colorful debris and wall- size cinematic collage backgrounds will all draw you in. Then you start reading labels and realize how deeply concerned and scientifically anchored each work is.