Three weird little guys made from what looks like liquid metal adorn a gallery plinth. Inspired by the world of toys artist Michael Doolan enacts a perverse reversal where the cheap and disposable child’s toy is transformed into a precious and permanent sculptural object. Doolan constructs his bizarre creatures using traditional hand building techniques and each object is then fired up to one dozen times to produce its transformative platinum-lustred surface. This surface carries the associations of top end consumer goods, the recent craze for stainless steel appliances for example. Their highly reflective faux liquid surfaces also prevent the objects from assuming fixed identities; like the Terminator’s liquid man, they appear to be in a constant state of transformation.

Comparisons have frequently been made between the sculptures of Michael Doolan and Jeff Koons, specifically with Koons’ calling card 1986 stainless steel Rabbit. Rather than emulating the seamless perfection of assembly line commodity production, Doolan cultivates the quirky, personalized appearance of his figures. Visible seams and impression marks of molding instruments reveal the traces of hand modeling.

For Doolan the shiny surfaces also implicate the viewer in the work. As the viewer gets close they catch themselves in the reflective figures. Doolan refuses to give the figures facial characteristics demanding that it is in fact the viewer’s reflection that he is most interested in capturing. The viewer is caught up in the gaze of the figure, entangled in the narcissistic, and often absurd, cycle of consumption.