juniorfritz.com

It’s well known that Postmodernist re-appropriation — or at least the popular tendency to reuse, recycle, and refashion industrial products into art — began with a bit of toilet humor. Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” — a simple urinal presented as a “readymade” sculpture in 1917 — was a watershed (pardon the pun) moment in Dadaism and the resulting movements. Although recycling today has taken on a different meaning, artists are still pulling ideas and materials from that ultimate place of meditation and material —The Can. Take French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet, who fashions spent toilet paper rolls into faces and other sculptural works. Jacquet is practicing the old art of origami with references to African mask styles and a very healthy dollop of French cheekiness. But his “les masques” collection reminds us that in every First-World household, there is a constant struggle to stay green in the bathroom where we waste the most water and discard the most paper products. Consciously or unconsciously, Jacquet has given a human face to this little-talked-about environmental crisis. We are the trash we make, say the little faces. Just think of that next time you run out of TP.