Elizabeth Dadi
1997
Sculptural frieze made from elements running across all the walls of the entire room.
Each element 7 x 5 x 0.5”
Recycled cast aluminum, reflective materials
Naughty Boy is a sculptural wall frieze that runs horizontally as a continuous band across the walls of the exhibition space. It is composed of metal casts of everyday plastic objects of play from urban informal South Asia.
The work is partly inspired by the wall reliefs in the Mayan Revival architecture of the early twentieth century by Frank Lloyd Wright (USA), and José Montes Córdova and Raúl Minondo (Guatemala). It also draws on cement wall reliefs such as by William George Mitchell in the UK, and Soviet Brutalist public structures.
These architectural facades created formal levity and mythical associations when placed on spare modernist architectural form. Naughty Boy similarly activates space by bringing the memory of informal play into the severity of the white cube.