Basswood
6 x 25 x 25 in
15.2 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm
2008
Richard Humann • Airplane • Basswood • 6 x 25 x 25 in • 2008
In Airplane, Richard Humann replaces the miniature aircraft of a children’s amusement park ride with the rack, a historical instrument of torture designed to stretch the human body. The basswood sculpture belongs to his series You Must Be This Tall, in which familiar carnival attractions are combined with devices associated with execution and torture. Through this unlikely pairing, Humann creates a darkly humorous work that transforms an innocent childhood amusement into a meditation on the painful realities of adulthood.
The visual double entendre lies in the relationship between the ride’s movement and the function of the devices that replace its airplanes. Children’s rides offer a simplified vision of the world, where the experience of flight becomes a safe and pleasurable adventure. The rack, by contrast, evokes the deliberate infliction of pain through physical stretching. Humann brings these meanings together in an absurd juxtaposition: the little planes that once promised imaginative escape are replaced by instruments that stretch the body rather than the imagination. The joke is both playful and unsettling, turning a familiar childhood attraction into a grotesque parody of growing up.
Beneath the humor, Airplane suggests that the transition from childhood to adulthood involves an often painful expansion of experience. The rack becomes a metaphor for the pressures that stretch a person beyond the boundaries of an earlier, more protected world. The realities of adult life—responsibility, authority, conflict, and suffering—can force a difficult reckoning with the innocence of childhood. As in the other works in You Must Be This Tall, Humann also draws attention to the way instruments of punishment can be absorbed into the visual language of public entertainment. By transforming a children’s ride into a scene of implied torture, he uses dark humor to expose the uncomfortable distance between the promise of carefree pleasure and the harsher realities that await beyond it.
Photo credit: Joseph Silva / Richard Humann Studio