Bob Pushed the Wrong Button

Craig Wcislo

12” x 11” x 22”

Stonewear and Wire

In Bob Pushed the Wrong Button, Craig Wcislo presents a sculptural form that feels both engineered and organic, as though it has emerged from an unfamiliar ecosystem governed by its own internal logic. Rising from a weighted stoneware base, a tightly coiled wire structure ascends vertically, recalling antennae, signal towers, or speculative tools designed for communication. Around it, fluid ceramic elements curve and reach upward, suggesting growth, adaptation, or mutation.

Wcislo’s work is informed by science fiction and the study of alternative life forms. This influence is evident in the sculpture’s sense of narrative tension. The piece reads like a moment frozen mid-experiment, at an intersection of intention and consequence. The contrast between rigid wire and responsive clay positions structure and imagination as equal collaborators in the work’s formation.

Bob Pushed the Wrong Button resonates with postwar sculptural traditions that explored hybridity and transformation. The verticality and linear emphasis recall Constructivist investigations into form and space. The organic ceramic elements evoke the biomorphic language of Jean Arp and later postminimalist sculptors who embraced process, chance, and material intelligence. Wcislo extends these conversations into a contemporary context, where speculative futures and ecological uncertainty shape how form is imagined.

The sculpture contributes a three-dimensional interpretation of rhythm through repetition, vertical movement, and spatial balance. The coil establishes a steady visual cadence. The ceramic forms interrupt and redirect the rhythm, creating a dynamic exchange between control and emergence.

Wcislo’s Bob Pushed the Wrong Button invites viewers to consider how systems evolve, adapt, and occasionally misfire, opening space for new possibilities of being.