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The Lurid Attack of The Monsters From The Postal News Aug. 1875 (Kabal American Zephyr)

Robert Rauschenberg The Lurid Attack of The Monsters From The Postal News Aug. 1875 (Kabal American Zephyr)

Texts by Jens Faurschou, Roni Feinstein, Hans Ulrik Obrist, Darryl Pottorf and Robert Rauschenberg

The Lurid Attack of the Monsters from the Postal News Aug. 1875 (Kabal American Zephyr) (1981) was created as part of a sculpture series Kabal American Zephyr (created between 1981-1988), which was inspired by the macabre work of the nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock printmaker Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

Set low to the ground at an incline, the construction suggests a fantastic slithery beast – a lizard or dragon – but also calls to mind a cannon or other instrument of war

For all its menace and intimations of disaster, the The Lurid Attack of The Mosters exerts a lyrical and seductive force. While the saws may have an intimidating effect, the tensile arches are strangely appealing, and the blue and orange paint that enlivens their surfaces establishes a palette that carries through the piece as a whole. Plain and patterned fabrics, some in bright colours, cover the top of the box. On the sides are images, transferred from newspapers and magazines, that allude to a wide range of subjects, from war and destruction to art, nature, and childhood play.