Art & Exhibitions
Florentijn Hofman Follows Up His Giant ‘Rubber Duck’ with Towering ‘Pink Kitten’
Sarah Cascone
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How do you follow up larger-than-life rubber ducks and plastic bag slugs? If you’re Florentijn Hofman, with a bright pink kitten crafted from strips of Jiangnan bamboo.
As reported by Complex, Hofman just unveiled his nearly-33-foot-tall Pink Kitten in Shanghai’s Century Park as part of the 2014 Cadillac China Exhibition of Design and Art.
artnet News spoke with Hofman during our trip to Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum, which hosted his 40-foot-tall Rubber Duck during its reopening celebrations. At the time, Pink Kitten was still under construction over in Shanghai.
As he prepared to have the sculpture fabricated on site, Hofman sent over the plans for a 3D model of the work, but there wasn’t a 3D printer on hand in China. Instead, the production unit quickly and competently created a small sculpture based on 2D images of the kitten. Technological difficulties aside, the team was able to accurately bring Hofman’s vision to life, creating the work first in miniature, and then on a larger scale, before setting to work on the massive, bamboo-woven version.
Much like Hofman’s cheerful Rubber Duck, Pink Kitten conveys a message of happiness and optimism. The artist clearly has a knack for enlarging cute figures to epic scale without letting them become overwhelming or threatening (unlike, say, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man).
Pink Kitten will be on view at Century Park in Shanghai through the end of June.
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