NEIL WOOD . Killer Wraps®
Killer Wraps® is a hybrid moniker and art brand created by Neil Wood. It names his particular style of poetry and his on-going project - where words are written, tested, thrown into hyperbole - and then brought to life in a combination of selected media such as flattened boxes, solid wood sculpture, printed limited editions, notebooks, T-shirts and filmed performance.
Language conjuring up form is adopted literally and deliberately as a strategy in Killer Wraps®. While the visual appeal of colour is exploited as a subterfuge for gaining access to hearts and minds, the history and etymology of selected colours is also offered as the starting point for establishing a new kind of narrative - one where sonic rhymes and surreal scenarios pop-up by choice or by chance.
The project shows words being applied in ways which flaunt traditional grammar with the kind of flippancy and humour which might allow a play-write or comic to appropriate well-known subjects, or freely revisit art history.
Thus, along with the structuralist school and the Bauhaus, Ellsworth Kelly’s 1951 artistic manifesto ‘Line, Form, Color’ comes to mind. And while Kelly’s original drawings and subsequent mural masterpieces have since passed into art posterity, the original 3 part stance remains an important benchmark for Neil Wood.
Killer Wraps® invites play and asserts a strong cryptic potential worth following, treading a very fine line between pathos and transgression.