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Eric Troffkin
          Born 1967
          Lives and works in Detroit, Michigan, USA
          www.erictroffkin.com
          Eric  Troffkin’s  interests  lie  at  a  crossroads  where  expectations  of  future
          progress encounter  these uncertainties: can the consequences of
          progress be foreseen? Is the notion of progress itself a matter of faith, and
          if so, upon what foundation is such faith built?
          Troffkin’s artworks mark and investigate this crossroads. They are pieces
          of fi ction, composed from a visual language that recalls the commercial
          products and technological objects that inhabit our architecture, dot our
          landscapes,  and mark our visual  culture.  Communications towers,  cell
          phone refl ectors, computer servers, and video monitors are to Troffkin as
          much emblems of hope and faith for the future as they are mechanisms
          involved  in our daily  lives.  Through  the reproduction,  abstraction, and
          transformation of such objects into organic sculptural form, Troffkin aims
          to provide a focal point for considering their psychic impact.

          Communications Vine,  fi rst  installed  in  2013,  is  a  hybrid  object  –  a
          red and white communications  tower  crossed with a plant. The  vine
          is composed from a system of modular units, allowing it to "grow" in
          response to landscape/exhibition conditions and according to the logic
          of its structure. There are two types of vine sections: one straight and one
          curved, and each either red or white. With only these two section types,
          a twisting and  surprisingly organic  composition  is achieved, occupying
          considerable space.
          Wind Blown is a pair of communication towers which seem to bend and
          twist in the wind at their tops. Each tower supports a single dish that is
          free to rotate in the wind around its vertical axis. This motion continues
          and animates the twists at the towers’ tops. Moving in the wind, the
          towers seem to respond to their environment, and also to scan, search,
          investigate, and interact with one another.

          ERIC  TROFFKIN    is  at  heart  a  studio  object-maker.  While  he  chooses  materials
          and devises  fabrication methods for their abilities  to imitate the look and feel of
          industrially produced  items,  his sculpture  remains  labour-intensively hand  made.
          Troffkin’s labour in the studio is an attempt to remove evidence of his hand in the
          work - imitating a prototyping and manufacturing process through which multiple
          elements are moulded and assembled. Designing “component systems,” not just
          for  their  functionality,  but  with  the  deeper  goal  of  discovering  their  unexpected
          possibilities – of fi guring out how they “grow”, Troffkin draws a connection between
          organic  growth  and  wildness and  the  real  technological  objects  that  inspire his
          sculpture, in order  to provoke the question: do our industrial  and technological
          activities follow natural patterns, or themselves exhibit forms of wildness?


                                                                                                                                   Above: Kneeling Communications Tower, 2006, Steel and Fibreglass.
                                                                                                                                   h: 244cm w: 152cm d: 915cm, Artist’s Collection.










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