Enter an Airstream Filled with Plush Toys, Love—And Secrets

Image courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture

The interior of an airstream trailer is covered floor-to-ceiling with plush figures, imparting a safe and soft place to explore our own individual softness and frailties. So is the hope of artists Maria Lynch and Daniel Perlin, and their mobile art space called Plush. The fuzz-filled trailer was was open to the public as part of Ideas City with the New Museum and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Lynch tells The Creators Project that Plush is not filled with what we might call playthings: “They are not toys nor stuffed animals, they are all constructed and hand-sewn, created from a mix of child’s play and abstraction,” she explains. “Yes I want [visitors] to remember teddy bears in a way, but with a phallic and amorphous feel. This ambiguity is very important for me since all of my work deals with that line in between.”

Image courtesy of the artist

As an adaption to a previous installation title Soft for the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Lynch asked Perlin to create a reactive sound component to further drive home the concepts of identity, sexuality, and childhood. Lynch explains that she and Perlin “thought about asking people to add to their own experiences, memories, unrevealed secrets.” 

According to the mission statement from the Storefront, Plush invites “guests to enter and explore its soft interior, which contains secret and reactive sounds. Visitors leave their ideas and words behind for others to hear, both present and online. These sounds exist in a dreamlike environment, and simultaneously reflect and hide the desires of those who engage within its space.”

Image courtesy of the artist

Plush will travel to Art Basel Miami Basel later this year as part of a solo show Lynch has at Blueshift Project. For more on Daniel Perlin see his website.

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