AutoPlastic: Wendell Castle 1968-1973

R 20th Century presents “AutoPlastic: Wendell Castle, 1968-1973”, an exhibition of the brightly colored, boldly sculptural furniture, lighting, and objects. The exhibition is organized by Donald Albrecht who wrote the accompanying brochure.

“AutoPlastic” situates Wendell Castle’s plastic furniture in the context of late 1960s and early 1970s design innovations and will also examine – through a selection of design photographs, magazines, and ephemera of the period – the relationship of the objects to their era’s social and cultural concerns. With forms that are natural, primitive, archaic, and often reminiscent of a womb-like embrace, Castle’s plastic objects recall a time when novelty and fantasy were a means of individual expression (“doing your own thing”), and environmentalism (“going back to the earth”) and escapism (“getting away from it all”) were intense reactions to the upheaval of America’s shifting values, student protests, race riots, assassinations, and the war in Vietnam.