PULL THEM ALL OUT!
Pull Them All Out! is a series of larger-than-life ceramic teeth by Gawie Joubert that scales an intimate compulsion into monumental sculptural form. The work takes its starting point from a specific obsessive-compulsive impulse the urge to remove a tooth in response to a small, unresolved irritation and externalises it as objects the viewer cannot ignore.
The conceptual frame is the gap between an interior sensation and its outward proportions. A trivial physical irritation, magnified by compulsion, comes to occupy the whole of attention; the sculptures stage that distortion of scale directly. By rendering the tooth at the size of the fixation rather than the size of the body, the work makes the asymmetry between trigger and response visible.
Each tooth is built in ceramic and finished in a glaze the artist formulates himself a deliberate move that ties the surface of every piece back to a specific material decision rather than an off-the-shelf result. The repetition and precision the work demands echoes the mental loop it describes, with the act of making functioning as both subject and counterweight.
