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American mixed media sculptor Mark Jenkins' fascination for sculpture sprung up after seeing the 2001 Juan Muñoz exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC.
Since then Jenkins has been installing witty street art installations in urban and environmental settings.
His first street art piece was a giant sperm made out of tape at Copacabana beach in 2003. He soon began focussing on figurative self-cast sculptures.
His Embed series composed of dressed human figures installed in urban settings excite passers-by. He placed casts of urban objects as parking meters and fire hydrants in suburban parks and forests(Street Extracts series) to criticize urban expansion whilst his Storker Project consisting of plastic clear tape babies in bizarre locations emphasizes children's vulnerability.
More recent projects are Meterpops( 2005: parking meters converted into giant lollipops), Traffic-go-round, Flowersigns and Storker Twins.
His imaginative art projects are social experiments, acts of psychological self-projection in public space.
The city's his canvas, tape's his medium, the artist is always in the humour for interactive work.
Article written by Ann Timmermans