Imagine giant pearl earrings that might comfortably fit a 100-foot tall Amazon, or think of an ornate branched candle stick holder made of rubber. Such objects might sound farfetched, but artist Timothy Horn specializes in using unique materials to create odd sized objects. A solo exhibition featuring six of his artworks is currently on display at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas.

Born in Australia and now based in New Mexico, Horn makes lavish sculptures. For his gigantic earrings he forges huge pearls by blowing glass and carefully coating the inside with silver to give them their pearlescent luster. He then mounts them in grapevine-like settings he makes from nickel plated cast bronze.

Timothy Horn; Mother-Load, 2008. Crystallized

rock sugar, plywood, steel 6' H x 5' 6" W x 9’ 6” D.

^{Courtesy of Lux Art Institute and the artist}

Horn is inspired by 18^th-century rococo objects, which themselves were based on seashells and small stones that decorated the grottoes of Italianate gardens. Appropriate to its inspiration, Horn’s sculptural earring entitled “Miranda” (2009) boasts four football sized drop pearls and six softball sized round pearls staged in a cascading chandelier mount cast in a curvilinear snarl of sea anemones. While fantastic in scale and design, the sculpture still seems tasteful and restrained.

Another rococo fantasy is horn’s sculpture entitled “Mother-Load,” 2008. The sculpture was made especially for an exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in honor of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels who founded the California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum—the sister art museum to the de Young. Alma Spreckels was the wife of sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels who was the brother of San Diego real estate developer John D. Spreckels. In honor of Alma, Horn created a nine-foot long sculpture in the guise of a German rococo two-seat coupé style carriage covered in amber hued rock sugar.

Even without prancing horses and footmen, the sugar covered carriage is lively because of its complex shape and flamboyant noodle-like decorations. The carriage gets its amber color from a coating of shellac, and the color combined with the German rococo style of the carriage recalls the famous Amber Room in the Catherine Palace outside St. Petersburg, which was a gift from Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I to Russian tsar Peter the Great to cement an alliance against Sweden. While the shellac covered sugar coating on the carriage might not taste very good, viewing the artwork with it intricate details is a sweet feast for the eyes.

Some viewers may consider such objects as outrageous and effeminate jokes—what might be termed as camp. Although, there is very little tongue-in-cheek humor in this exhibition. While the sculptures are fun, the attention to detail and the craftsmanship in most of the work by Horn is too serious and exacting to be considered mere jokes. The artworks also avoid ironic insult, which is also an attribute of camp, as Horn’s symbolism tends to honor rather than devalue the sculptures’ subjects.

Less whimsical and more lurid is Horn’s earlier sculpture entitled “Mutton Dressed as Lamb” (2005). It is a girandole—a branched candle holder. Horn’s candle holder is cast from rubber that is very skin-like in color and texture, which, makes the artwork anthropomorphic. The sculpture is based on a drawing from Thomas Chippendale’s book The Gentleman & Cabinet-Maker’s Director published in 1762.

In Chippendales version the girandole has a flat middle that accommodates a mirror to reflect more light. In Horn’s version, instead of a flat midsection, the rubber body of the girandole is swollen like a belly, and the girandole’s four rubber projecting candle holders and other protruding elements slightly sag, which gives the sculpture a wan sexuality. In this context, other decorative flourishes can be seen as dripping fluids to reinforce the sexual message of the work. The veiled eroticism of Horn’s girandole is not out character for a rococo style artwork because many of that era’s paintings had hidden and overt sexual references.

The rococo style itself was a more lighthearted attempt to create extremely complex design for an affluent and carefree social group—serious whimsy for the wealthy 18^th–century bourgeoisie and nobility. Horn’s artworks should be considered in a similar fashion because they are, fundamentally, expensive luxury items for today’s wealthy class. As the Lux Art Institute is barely a mile from the exclusive enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, this particular exhibition supports the idea that Horn’s artworks are expensive baubles for the rich. This actually reinforces Horn’s rococo credibility and thwarts the perception of his artwork as being camp parodies.

Central to Lux Art Institute’s mission is that it has an artist-in-residence program, and Timothy Horn will be in residence making artwork at the institute until October 9. He will be creating a new artwork by collecting local specimens of seaweed and modeling them in wax to be cast in bronze as part of a larger work.