"When Martin gets hurt, it's not so that we can make fun of him," said Ian Berry, the show's curator. "He's helping us access the awkwardness in our own lives, to release some tension or inhibition."
Movement also plays an important role in two new large-scale pieces that serve as the show's twin centerpieces. "Dionysian Stage" is a giant bird's nest made of willow and interspersed with household detritus -- furniture, dishes, old clothes. The assemblage rests atop a rotating tire that transforms the nest into an elephantine dervish.
At the opposite end of the museum gallery sits "Rickety," a giant wood-and-steel platform featuring artificial foliage and supported entirely by old cabinets. The installation will double as a stage on which Kersels will perform a hybrid lecture-dance-movement piece titled "Heavyweight Lecture Musicale" on Sept. 23.
"A museum is all about historicizing art, and I didn't want this show to be looked at as something static," he said. "I wanted to say that art is a continuing and ongoing thing."
Like his art, Kersels' career is also in a state of perpetual motion. In October, the artist will debut new work in a solo show at the Acme Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2009, he's scheduled to have solo gallery shows in Paris and Turin, Italy. He currently teaches at CalArts.
Elsa Longhauser, director of the Santa Monica Museum of Art, attributes Kersels' international appeal to his mix of humor and physicality.
"His work isn't beautiful in the classic sense but rather in the absurd sense," she said. "Everything about him is outsized. But it's not body art at all -- it's his private anthropology."
Growing up, Kersels was always a big kid, but he didn't reach his current height until he was 19. "My dad was worried that I might have gigantism because I was growing so late," the artist recalled, adding that he's the biggest member of his family.
He said the last year has been personally difficult. Health problems in his family coupled with the fact that he quit smoking have caused his weight to balloon. "I've always been big, but I've never been quite this big," he said.
Currently living in Sierra Madre, Kersels is married to Mary Collins, who often assists him with the creative process. In the electronic sculpture "Sputterer," in which stereo noises provoke ripples in a pot of water, husband and wife collaborated on making the flatulent noises heard over the speakers.
