“This is a serious problem,” he said.
His small businessmen have proven this. The sculptures often appear unassumingly, alone or in groups, with expressions on their faces etched from the stress of the job. They follow company bosses nonchalantly into the dark depths of rain pits, texting frantically as hordes of refugees float by in the gutters; clinging to their cellphones as their canoes sink; floating rings ineffective in the face of rising sea levels; they drag ropes even if it’s just a shadow or a crack; they walk nonchalantly into rain gutters that look like gaping factory gates.
“Progress should be oriented toward the creation of a just society,” Kordar continued. “We can discover that there is water on Mars, but we can’t solve the water supply problem on Earth. We have an overproduction of food, but there are millions of hungry people in the world. We can build the weapons of the previous generation, but we still wonder why there are wars.”
Although the small businessmen of Kodar seem blind to contradictions, they are not always villains. In fact, it is clear from the wrinkles on their faces, the symbolic hunching of their shoulders, the desperate hollows in their cheeks that many of them do their “bread work” under duress – coercion, coercion and fear in equal measure. It’s not uncommon for these worried men to consider throwing a fatal blow from a utility line, or to meditate on a small grassy grave within a natural crack in the asphalt.
“Progress is disappearing around us in these shopping malls,” said Kordal. “They’re packed with luxury cars… plasma TVs and next-generation cell phones.”
At a recent exhibition in Montreal, Urban Inertia, we discovered that one ill-fated guy was actually trapped in a mousetrap baited with a briefcase. Nearby, his colleagues sat neatly in the interior of an old filing cabinet, being lectured by a grey-clad presenter.
(He) stayed under the snow for several days. difficult to understand How can these things happen in the so called first world. “
We imagine that Kafka would have been proud and then probably embarrassed by the public display. There’s a rusty toolbox full of little scientists peering into a human skull, and another toolbox full of businessmen waiting for instructions. Kordar believes that fear is a powerful form of social control. It’s better to do nothing than risk embarrassment or profit.
Unfinished People, a series of works Cordal launched last winter on the streets of New York, explores the seismic fissures in this system. Inspired by his first visit to the city, when he saw a homeless man covered in snow, the series took shape.
“I was really surprised by the number of homeless people I saw,” Kordar recalled. “But I specifically remember this homeless man leaning against a railing with a blanket over him… (He) stayed under the snow for days. It’s hard to understand how these things can happen in the so-called First World. We’ve reached the point of insensitivity.”
To bear witness to the growing gap between rich and poor, Cordar recreates some all-too-familiar scenes in miniature and places them where people are likely to see them: a tightly wrapped woman sitting on an old mattress with sad eyes and a child on one knee; an old bearded guy with a blanket covering his head; a street hustler in a knitted hat, with his dog and a book, huddled against the cold. Cordar’s most desperate businessmen also appear in the series: one, wrapped in a thin red blanket, lands near the railroad tracks in Brooklyn; Another borrowed warmth from a subway vent; a jaw-dropping stockbroker dragged himself out of the Hudson River, while another considered jumping in. A number of small bodies were floating in a puddle near Rector Street, including one lying face down on the sidewalk under a downspout from which he had been permanently evicted.
“These are people who don’t fit into the system,” Kordar said. “These are people who[can’t]fit into a society where we can only function if we are productive.”
Lucky passers-by noticed and stopped to take photos with their phones of the unfinished man. Of course they did. These works are touching and true. And safe. One can gaze into Cordar’s tiny face and experience recognition, even pain, without any real risk of connection.
Admirers might even pick up the figures and take them home—these pieces are, after all, pocket-sized. But hopefully, this work won’t disappear until Kordar’s point is made. Hopefully a thousand people noticed the small, gaunt businessman kneeling before a giant urban toadstool – a bright red plastic plug rising from the stem of a small, oxidized tube. Hopefully they can understand the pain of losing something irreplaceable. *
This article originally appeared in High Fructose Issue 39, which is now sold out. Subscribe here to get our latest issue of High Fructose in print.
