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This stuff is crap! It's made out of crap! Horribly designed acres of crap. Bowls, vases, coffee cups, cheesy figurines, gobs of other poorly mass produced unadulterated crap and once in a while, a vintage, collectible and because "they don't make um any more", valuable piece of expensive crap. But It's the crap dreams are made of, especially when California artist Paul DiPasqua gets a hold of it.
 For the last 10 years DiPasqua has been gluing crap together to form what I call "punk ceramics" (although DiPasqua’s  work is not limited to ceramic objects. He will use anything sort of shit he finds to make a piece of art work). The work described here is figurative ceramic sculpture made from found ceramic objects.
 At first glance DiPasqua’s figures appear rather "cute"  for lack of a better word but that is because they really are made out of some of the world's worst cutesyist stuff imaginable.
 Upon closer inspection however, one realizes the hand of a truly demented genius is at work, The figures are almost always naked and up until recently, almost always male.  They are filled with symbolism and humor,  sarcasm mixed with  terror  and a "punkish angst" that throws up on many of our sacred rims and ass-perations.
 The real scary thing when looking at DiPasqua’s work comes when one realizes how many pieces of crap are used( sometimes well  over a hundred) and how much energy along with enormous amount of resources it took when grunting out even  the simplest of them.   Each object in DiPasqua’s figures  started with  some CEO walking into their well equipped corporate design studios and saying, "Yeah! that's it! That's the one all right! Let's make five hundred thousand of those crappy bastards! Yahoo! that's the Ticket!"
  After this landmark decision is made a  tremendous surge of corporate parastaltsys takes place. Like a long awaited bowl movement, (you know the one you've held for hours and hours that when finally released it rips through your lower intestines like a freight train pulling a rose bush) the fiber of industry rushes forward.
 The designer of the ob’ject de merde  shuffles it to a master mold maker where polyethylene or stainless steel masters are made . Hundreds of plaster molds are produced.  Glazes are developed, poured , splashed and painted. Kilns are lit up like Christmas trees. Eye grabbing packaging is crafted. Tables are lined with rolls of  tape, labels, invoices, bubblewrap, excelsior and pellaseal. 800 numbers , disclaimers, web addresses are applied with great care while the mounting pile of reject crap is counted, discarded and flushed at the nearest receptacle. Trucks are loaded, trains begin rolling, ships  sail. Paychecks are received and spent.  Rice is eaten.   All this energy for the sake of  a little piece of crap you can drink out , send to your Nana or display proudly with the rest of your (you  guessed it).
 After all this, with the swiftness and certainty of a well placed babywipe, all the stuff used to produce the "original crap" disappears with a quiet whoosh and before you can pull up your jockey’ shorts  "new improved crap" with it's "new original crap design "starts the parastaltic process all over.
 As DiPasqua puts it," So much energy went in to the production of this stuff, I'm fascinated with the amount of energy it takes to make even a simple object like a coffee cup. It seems a shame not to try and honor this energy by redeeming it, somehow , make it important and give it a little extra life. Even though most of this stuff should never have been made it's production fed a lot of people, paid a lot of taxes and allowed a lot of Chinese dissidents to maybe  scarf down an extra bowl of rice."
 Although DiPasqua seemingly uses recycled "crap", he does not consider himself a crappy recycling artist.  "My work is more about recycling ideas and energy rather than objects.  It’ not the redemption of crap I'm after but rather the redemption of crappy ideas by crappy people. "
 "When I work I plunge into  the tradition of the figurative Europeeon nude narrative. The figure I create then  bodily functions as a orifice  for smart ass prepubescent potty humor and other  low brow observations. When people look at my work I want to leave them feeling happy, relieved  and satisfied like they just unburdened themselves of a heavy load."

  Well Mr. DiPasqua, with corn and tomato skins a tip o the handle to you.

http://dipasquastudios.com/