Pipes of progress (2020)

Pipes of Progress (2020), trompe l’oeil pipes made out of ceramic, treated to appear weathered and aged, pipes without beginning nor end, form a puzzling maze standing on an aerated concrete base. Whenever the pipes connect in some places, a slimy green substance seems to ooze out of the joints, dripping down the body of the pipes themselves. By selecting a green glaze to stand out against the copper-colored tubes, the artist highlights the decay of a system which has become obsolete and wasteful. The interlocking pipes form a maze which feeds on itself and leads nowhere yet leaks excess waste at every bend.

With this piece, the artist pokes at a system he believes clogged with regulations, restrictions, waste and inefficiency. By choosing universally recognized industrial artefacts, the artist calls upon our familiarity with the wastelands created by industry in the name of progress. The pipes are indeed clogged with “green” ideology, the modules not only bursting at the seams, but disintegrating under their own weight, thanks to the inevitable passage of time. Nicholls displays once again his fascination for structural decay by accentuating clumsiness in the fashioning of each piece so as to convey a visible disgust for the subject itself. The perpetual loop created by interconnected pipes going nowhere points to a world where the notion of progress has been permanently altered. In Pipes of Progress there is no inflow or outflow, just waste oozing off the sides, a direct indictment of a discourse where progress has been prevented in the name of an undefinable substance.