"In Husk, Karl Unnasch brings these lines of inquiry to one of the most widespread talismans of rural experience, one often only known to those who have lived beyond the city — Busch Light cans littered in roadside ditches and fields. Unnasch’s attention to this object and its material and symbolic dimensions transports it from the evidence of everyday life into a parallel space where its cultural implications can also be considered: as a “multilayered stereotype” that evinces rugged individualism, ecological disregard, and the emotional and spiritual damage generated by social and economic norms. With its outline a reference to the classical figure of Dying Gaul, Husk suggests the millennial arc of these questions of empire while also bringing those concepts home. 'With every crushed can there is the hand of the maker,' Unnasch shares, calling into question not only the hidden agency shaping these ubiquitous beer cans, but the complex intersection of cultural histories invisible to an urban-normative point of view.
"As with much of Unnasch’s work, Husk stands as a striking sculptural presence that, upon further engagement, reveals unacknowledged dimensions of contemporary rurality — and stands in stark, luminous opposition to the warped representations of rural places (both critical and sentimental) imposed from beyond."
— Excerpt from Matthew Fluharty's Karl Unnasch: Husk, 2020, High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country, November 2020
Foreground photo: Cody Jacobson
Background photo: Nicole Unnasch
Background photo on top block: Cody Jacobson
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