Eric Liot: Excavating the Contemporary

Walk into the P gallery | sculpture and you are immediately confronted by what the artist calls "inverted archaeology." Instead of digging through the dirt to find the past, Eric Liot builds it from scratch, using the raw, industrial remnants of the present. In this exhibition, the classical silhouettes of the 2nd century BC—from the Winged Victory of Samothrace to anonymous Hellenistic busts—are reimagined as a modern mythology where ancient gods like Hermes share the same heroic weight as Superman.

You can see the raw honesty in the construction; Liot leaves the joints, screws, and coarse wooden surfaces fully exposed, giving the pieces a rugged, almost industrial feel. This grit is balanced by the use of bronze, which binds the fragments together and lends them the undeniable gravity of high art. It is a bold, material-heavy exploration of how we remember the past, and how we choose to reconstruct our heroes using the debris of contemporary life. Whether you are a fan of classical sculpture or modern pop art, these hybrid figures offer a fascinating look at the timelessness of the human form.