The packing tape industry must love Mark Jenkins. An innovative Virginia-born street artist, his most novel projects involve creating sculptures entirely out of tape – resulting in dream-like translucent figures that seem bizarrely juxtaposed to the urban scenes where they appear.

 

Jenkins has created tape sculptures of everything from horses to dogs to fire hydrants, even sticking giant transparent lollipop suckers on top of parking meters in Washington, much to the visible confusion of passersby. The play of light against and through Jenkins’ sculptures imbues them with a charge of irresistible energy that has to be seen in motion to be fully appreciated.

 

 

Another of Jenkins’ schemes is the Storker Project, which involves the strategic dropping of ‘tape babies’ across the globe – babies that, according to Jenkins, can be adopted by the passersby to “gradually mature to a full size Tape Man or Woman to co-habitate with you and eventually take you to the Glazed Paradise”. We’re not sure what happens when you arrive at Glazed Paradise, but we’re willing to take a punt. As of now, over a hundred tape babies have descended all over the globe, from Tokyo to Bethlehem – though still none yet at home.

 

And it doesn’t end with the tape roll. The Embed Series features fully clothed human-like figures partially stuck inside street objects, to disconcerting but ultimately enthralling effect. The best part about Embed is that Jenkins videotapes onlookers’ reactions, which run the gamut from casual amusement to what can only be described as the kind of horrified awe usually reserved for the bit where the hysterical teen realises she should have made sure Jason was really dead before throwing away that knife.

 

Like the greatest street artists Jenkins’ work both surprises and entertains. And if the packing tape industry doesn’t love him, then – dagnabbit – we’ll take him instead.

 

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