Jason Hackenwerth

Jason Hackenwerth, Beach Trumpet, 2007.

Jason Hackenwerth’s big biomorphic sculptures look like they eat cute little balloon animals for breakfast. The NYC-based artist traveled to the Pacific Northwest with photographer Sean Gilligan to document his pieces made from elongated balloons, some of which are worn by people. All suggest creatures far stranger than any circus clown could create. (The artist also has made a brainlike balloon sculpture for the gallery.)

Hackenwerth’s organisms are impressive for their sheer size alone, especially Leviathan, a 40-foot-long tubelike blue bug that floats quietly above a rushing river. Others take on an eerie cinematic quality in the photographs: In the misty Alien Rainforest, illuminated like an attack scene from Jurassic Park, a massive, spiny, green trumpet-shaped creature—with “feelers” waving around its primary orifice—parades around in knee-high, lace-up lavender leather boots. In The Shepherd, Hackenwerth himself—wearing only a slug-shaped pink balloon outfit—stands amid the rocky, barren landscape made by a dormant volcano’s lava flow. As he gazes into the distance, three tiny pink balloon-sheep wander aimlessly nearby.

The wow factor of this bizarre work wears off once you start wondering what the artist is trying to say. His balloon-insect-human amalgamations in an empty terrain seem to envision a postapocalyptic landscape, a theme that has been overused in the Chicago art scene. But even if Hackenwerth’s topic is stale, his extremely creative use of materials makes his work pop.