Claes Oldenburg’s sculptural practice is characterized by his witty and often audacious depiction of mundane objects. Playing with contradictions of material and form, he converts a wide variety of consumer products into soft sculptures or expands them to larger-than-life scale. In Typewriter Eraser, a once-common object that is now obsolete is enlarged and frozen in balletic motion. The typewriter eraser is a recurring motif in Oldenburg’s work; he created several drawings, prints, and sculptures of the object, culminating in a twenty- foot-tall work made in 1999. This sculpture is the first of the series, and the basis for subsequent versions.

Wall label, 2021.