The artist’s détournement of plastic column moulds falls just short of providing a meaningful critique of global capitalism
As far as readymades go, the two large tubular sculptures (IGBTTLTVOE [Elbow], 2026) that snake around the gallery are not composed of the most immediately recognisable objects. It takes a closer look, or checking the exhibition text, to get that these pale pipes, dotted with black screws, are actually mass-market plastic sectional moulds made for casting ‘antique-style’ – Doric – columns. The prefabricated modular moulds are in coffee-stained-teeth yellow. In white are Jan Vorisek’s interventions: 3D-printed versions of similar moulds but curved and plugged between the ‘originals’ to create articulations (elbows) that bend the straight objects into wormlike structures.
On their own, the moulds are weird enough objects to create a dissonance with the noble classical architecture they invoke. The bulky screws line up along their seams, ants-on-a-log style, and reinforcement ribs stick out where one might expect fluted recesses. The structures are flimsy hollow shells that support nothing. They are made of ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) plastic, a material so synthetic-sounding it might be found in the labels on your shampoo or medication. In the middle of the room, one end of each structure stands upright, gaping at the ceiling it cannot reach. The articulations the artist has added dissolve any sense of dignity that these tubes might have retained, the two conduits curving away from one another, one heading straight into the wall, the other turning downwards as if to bore into the floor.
Along with the column’s structural integrity, the catchall symbol of power that is associated with it, through its historical and cultural authority, collapses. That the evocation of Ancient Greek architecture comes through these contemporary made-in-China moulds (their measurements are embossed in Mandarin on the plastic) simultaneously evokes Western culture’s deep roots in the classical tradition and situates its symbolic collapse in the context of our hyperglobalised, hyperconsumerist age. The exhibition material informs us that these moulds are cheap tricks marketed to landlords and developers to increase their property value via ‘ornamentation rather than function’. The ‘power’ they represent in the contemporary, then, is one of semiabstract financial value that helps further the concentration of wealth within the property-owning class. This power is ridiculed: made tacky by its exposed outsourced mass production and emasculated by its flaccidity. It’s a simple but effective gesture.
But its simplicity is also its limitation. Though these drooping columns convey a vague critique of global capitalism and intangible value systems, it becomes apparent that they lack the critical distance to say much more. An online search for column moulds directs to the e-commerce giants Temu and Alibaba. From there, Vorisek’s détournement has ‘rescued’ them from their fate of churning out kitsch concrete columns until meeting their early landfill grave, and instead brought them into the gallery space. They now perform commentary rather than function, and they have likely never been more valuable.
Jan Vorisek, Elbows, Arcadia Missa, London, 17 January – 21 February
From the March 2026 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
