“Pixel Deer”
A “family” of four colorful metal deer sculptures can be found dotting the landscape on either side of Inspiration Lane. Similar sculptures have been featured in an exhibition at the Denver Botanical Gardens, permanently affixed in the RiNo Arts District, and can be found at locations across the country. The pixel deer were installed in 2022.
Local artist Mike Whiting blends minimalism and early video game graphics to create his outdoor sculptures. Pixel-based imaging in early video games communicated as much visual information as possible with limited memory space. Minimalist design intentionally reduces objects to their simplest form. He finds that minimalism and pixelated abstraction are different art movements with similar visual results.
The sculptures are meant for the outdoors and gradually take on a weathered look.
“During a walking-tour discussion for Pixelated, Whiting expounded on his fondness for distressed, or “vintage,” finishes that feel comfortable, holding up over time, with ongoing deterioration adding to the soothing association an object is capable of eliciting. “I use automotive paint. Once it’s dry I go back into it and beat it up a little bit using different things. If I use a lot of different elements, it gives it a more realistic feeling, so I use cinder blocks and sandpaper and rocks and bricks and whatever I can find. I just keep going over the surface until they’re somewhat beat up,” Whiting stated in a 2018 interview with Botanic Gardens Associate Curator Jen Tobias. Works presented at the Gardens such as “Buck” exhibited this idea in full effect, the heavy rust-tones amplifying from within the automotive paint finish in a remarkable fashion that only reveals the intended character over time.
In this way Mike’s work, in part, is about this idea of worn-in paint that has done its job as a protective layer for the steel underneath. Only when nature, the elements, man, machines and chance have left their mark can the once perfectly slick finish become softer, the color fading, with marks like in a pencil drawing beginning to appear.”
