After we talked about Chris Burden in class and his grey lamp posts I remembered Kris Kuksi and his found object assemblage. He collects all sorts of toys, models and dolls, paints them and arranges them into landscapes/reliefs reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch.
That last photo looks like a three dimensional representation of a Gustave Moreau painting.
Yet another tangent, this reminded me of the toy collection of Jarvis Rockwell (son of Norman Rockwell). He doesn’t modify his toys (most of which are unremarkable in terms of rarity or monetary value) but arranges them in a massive stepped stepped pyramid. I had a chance to meet Jarvis about 5 years ago while at MASS MoCA but sadly this was either before or after his collection was on display. Instead, he was working on a very elaborate and labor-intensive wall drawing every day when I was there installing. Interesting, eccentric artist who is worthy of much greater attention.
http://www.sprayblog.net/jarvis-rockwells-maya-ii/
thanks marc- interesting work and rockwell’s son to boot!
If you Google him you’ll find mention of an article on Jarvis that was in Artforum years back. I vaguely remember that it had photos of other arrangements of his collection (I think they were more narrative) that were quite compelling. The article seems to require registration to read so I didn’t link to it.