Hair Dryer

Michael Schultz’s Brobdingnagian Hair Dryer is fit for a giant’s salon. Finished in an attractive pink, the vast sculpture is complete with a working fan as its mechanism. This outsized hairdryer echoes the immense household items of Claes Oldenburg, who transforms everyday objects into alien new entities through their altered scale: indeed, Oldenburg has often recreated plugs and switches in gigantic form, as with the wooden sculpture Giant 3-Way Plug Scale 2/3 (1970) held in Tate Modern. Schultz, however, gives his appliance a distinctly British feel with its three-pin plug, and plays on its associations with consumerist vanity. At the work’s opening exhibition, Schultz accompanied the hairdryer with a catsuited model who mimed her desire for the object. While it’s likely rather ineffective for drying hair, the air blown from its fan could perhaps be used to recreate the windblown glamour of a kitsch video commercial or photoshoot – yet any such utility is undercut by its lying flat on the floor. It’s as if some preening colossus has dropped it to the ground and walked away.