The British artist Alex Chinneck has created a two-story house made from wax in the London area of Southwark, as part of the Merge Festival 2014.
Titled A pound of flesh for 50p, the installation was erected at the end of September, mimicking the scale and design of a candle making factory that was based in the same area a few centuries ago.
The installation, a life-sized building constructed with 8,000 wax bricks weighing up to 10 metric tons, is heated each morning with a handheld heating machine commonly used in roofing applications. Thus, the wax house is melting down in hypnotic, slow motion fashion. When the installation concludes on November 18, there won’t be more than a mushy puddle left on the pavement.
The prolific 30-year-old Chinneck has quickly earned a reputation as a master of illusion, an “Uri Geller of bricks and mortar,” as the Guardian called him. Over the past year, Chinneck has dazzled London audiences with his maverick architectural installations, which include flipping buildings upside down, suspending them midair, and letting them slither down on the pavement.
Despite recurring comparisons to conceptual artists with a penchant for architecture such as Rachel Whiteread or Gordon Matta-Clark, Chinneck is not a fan of the over-intellectualization of art. “These pieces are not conceptually driven, or trying to deliver a particular message,” he told the Guardian. “The aim is to astound people and just cheer them up a bit.”
Check the astonishing gradual melting of A pound of flesh for 50p in the slideshow above.