In his pieces, Ken Womack captures the looming shadow of modernity and capitalism, often transforming everyday items into cyclopean artifacts.
Physical size is tied to human conception of worth. It’s why they hand out big novelty checks as prizes even though a standard one cashes just the same. The difference between how big something is in terms of our regard for it and how big it is in objective measurement is an ever-present source of wonder and friction.
Dallas sculptor Ken Womack rides that frictional space the way his daddy used to ride bulls. Born and raised in Texas, Womack spent 35 years in the advertising game, founding agencies like Shift Option J, Agent 485, MindHandle, and The Agency Hack. Like all ad men, his job was to take things and make them bigger in the public mind, and he brings that same point of view to his remarkable pop art sculptures.
“I instinctively use all of my ad and promotional training when developing and displaying my art, although there are some key distinctions between displaying a product and displaying art,” said Womack via an email interview. “You are trained as a marketer to work backward from the mindset and desires of the target. Often times that actually impacts the development of the product, as the point is always to sell product. For art, I’d (of course) like to sell it, but the exploration of the piece is about self-expression and the meaning of the artwork, not sales.
There’s no denying that Womacks’s presentation is influenced by advertising even as he subverts the practice. “Texas Toast” is an enormous sculpture of buttered bread shaped like the state and almost as tall as Womack himself. Another piece, “Tore Up From the Floor Up” gives the same megaphiliac treatment to a crushed Lone Star Beer can. It’s kitschy, no doubt. Either piece would look at home on the wall of a popular locally owned steak restaurant.
But divorced of that setting and given an unbiased space in a gallery, they become something much more open to interpretation. These kaiju-sized versions of food and garbage obliterate your normal conceptions the way Mothra destroys the definition of insect. It’s almost a form of idolatry, especially fitting in a modern world that almost worships its consumer items.
Flann Harris is a partner at the Dallas-based Scout Design Studio, which has hosted many works by Womack. Harris has seen visitors wowed by the size and audacity of Womack’s work.
“Ken’s work has swagger without ego,” he said in an email interview. “It’s bold, graphic, and confident—but still soulful. You don’t have to ‘get’ art to feel his pieces; they hit you instantly. We’ve seen a lot of artists come through Scout Design Studio over the years, but Ken is truly in a league of his own. It’s creative, pop-culture-laced, whimsical, punchy, and pingy—yet still legit AF in its execution. No one else is producing work like this; the sheer talent and vision are incredible.”
Scout is displaying one of Womack’s newest works starting January 15. The piece is called “Brolaroid 2,”and is part of Womack’s fascination with analogue media. He’s designed giant cassette tapes and vinyl records, but the “Brolaroid” is a fully interactive Poloaroid camera. Visitors can use it to take enormous selfies. The illusion is created using a screen to display pictures on the extending film part of the structure. So, you can’t take the photo with you, but it’s an interesting commentary on the selfie as seen in the instantaneous digital now versus the slightly less instantaneous analog then.,
“The fascination of legacy media is not accidental, but a human response to our rapidly changing digital existence, I believe,” said Womack. “People are seeking authentic human interaction. We all spend too much time on our screens, and that can be isolating. So art like the Brolaroid is an antidote of sorts. It’s a ‘selfie machine,’ and after watching crowds interact with the first Brolaroid in Miami at the Spectrum Art Fair in 2023, it was clear the power of the piece is seeing people get lost watching themselves on TV, becoming voyeurs of themselves. It’s an interesting sociology experiment blending real life action and digital capture. My original intent was to create a fun, interactive piece, but I think it’s more than that after seeing it in action.”
Womack’s work is deeply impactful and spreading. Later this month, the ABV Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia will display Womack’s “Nevermind,” a 4-foot sculpture of a Nirvana-inspired mix tape. In June, the Museum of the Southwest in Midland is hosting a solo exhibition of Womack pieces called “GIANT,” featuring 20 large works.
In his pieces, Womack captures the looming shadow of modernity and capitalism, often transforming everyday items into cyclopean artifacts. Advertising does this on billboards and movie screens every day to convince us to see things like Coca-Cola and pop stars as essential needs, but Womack’s subversion dares us to look at them as items of worth in and of themselves. He does this with tongue firmly in cheek, but the awesomeness remains even if you laugh at it.
It’s the sort of art that really only works in Texas, a place obsessed with size for size’s sake which will make an idol out of anything provided it’s ten feet tall. Through his work. Womack understands Texas more than the state does itself.
“There is a romance to the state and the oil and cowboy culture that the entire world understands, and my art embraces, references and pokes fun at it all at the same time,” said Womack.
Great Job Jef Rouner & the Team @ The Texas Signal for sharing this story.
