Darren Sylvester, The Heads of Snowmen, Neon Parc, 2024, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne.

Their high-gloss finish adds a hi-end consumer desirability synonymous with Darren Sylvester’s work; colours he selected to parallel the Ellsworth Kelly painting Spectrum IX (2014), as well as reference a display of seasonal “It” handbags. This colour picking and display technique is a hallmark of Sylvester’s practice, evident in his Balenciaga coloured furniture, the Triple S Space Rocker (2021); and the cosmetic-coloured dancefloor installation For You (2013-2019), along with his purple sand catwalk adorned with bronze coconuts in To Live (2016).

The exhibition further underscores Sylvester’s thematic exploration of arresting mortality through various mediums, echoing previous works including his gold plated vampire stakes from 2020 and wood and bronze cosmetic masks that hold similar childlike expressions to these works. Each temporal snowmen is given a semblance of life, with personified, atypical names including Carrot, Frosty and Snowy.

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