Jen Ring
St. Pete-based artist Jason Hackenwerth makes a lot more than just balloon sculptures. The multidisciplinary artist started his career 20 years ago, making and showing paintings in New York City. But he wasn’t happy with the pace with which his paintings were selling, so he started experimenting with latex balloons in the subway by his studio.
“I would just blow up little balls and I would stick them around on the ceiling in these dank places,” Hackenwerth told The Gabber.
The work was interesting enough to attract the attention of the Scope Art Fair’s producer and curator, who gave Hackenwerth the opportunity to decorate the hotel lobby for the 2004 fair. Despite working on it without sleep or food for days, Hackenwerth’s installation was torn down before the fair even began.
via Instagram, Creative Pinellas
Then inspiration struck. Hackenwerth had a vision of connecting the balloons to make a form.
“So I pushed through curiosity and fear and I made the very first ever sculpture there, at that fair, and it took off,” Hackenwerth told The Gabber. “By the end of 2005, I had been flying all over the world, all over the place, making sculptures in museums and art fairs. I was given a grant to make a sculpture at the Venice Biennale. It was amazing.”
The Venice Biennale came with its own challenges. Hackenwerth planned to hang his balloon sculptures all over the city, but the kids of Venice had other ideas.
“I was climbing up trees to hang sculptures up as high as I could, ”Hackenwerth told The Gabber, “or I was scaling the sides of buildings and terraces to hang the sculptures in places and walkways all around Venice. But no matter how clever I thought I was, and no matter how good my parkour skills were, I couldn’t get them up high enough that the kids that lived in Venice couldn’t reach them and then steal them. Every morning, for a week, I’d go out and I’d put these sculptures all over town. I started at 3 a.m. and by 10 a.m. I’d have them all over town. By the afternoon, kids were riding around on bikes wearing my sculptures.”
In another career pivot, Hackenwerth designed his first wearable balloon sculpture. He built a wearable bed bug balloon sculpture with launchable balloon missiles on site.
“I put this thing on and I went on the hunt, looking for those kids,” Hackenwerth told The Gabber. “It didn’t take long before we had a showdown. In front of the Ed Roche pavilion, I was having a battle with young kids on bikes [shooting] my balloon missiles from my giant bed bug sculpture.”
Kids have always been some of Hackenwerth’s most enthusiastic fans. They ran underneath and around Hackenwerth’s balloon sculptures during the opening reception for Dark Matter at Creative Pinellas this summer, touching as much as they could reach.
I’m also excited about these balloon sculptures, but I’m not literally running circles around them. Hackenwerth has a theory about this.
“I think that in most cases, the sculptures with balloons elicit a similar response in adults,” says Hackenwerth, “but adults are just much more reserved in how they express their reaction. And children, they just go crazy, because they don’t know not to…Adults, they hold back, but kids are showing us how we’re really feeling on the inside.”
The adults stood underneath Hackenwerth’s balloon sculptures at Dark Matter and took selfies before exploring the drawings and paintings in the adjacent galleries.
More than just balloons, Dark Matter walks us through 20 years of Hackenwerth’s career, including several stand-alone paintings along with drawings and photos of past balloon sculpture designs. Together, they provide a unique glimpse into Hackenwerth’s process and deliver us to a foreign world of UFOs, giant insects, and alien-like forms.
At Creative Pinellas through October 16.
