These works spanned over a decade long relationship with the material for Chad Person. Blow Up featured seven large-scale inflatables. Tracing the development of the artist’s reconfiguration of inflatable advertising inflatables, the exhibition featured one of Person’s earliest works, Ozymandias Weeps, 2005, a sad vinyl blow-up version of the Big Boy icon sitting and weeping with his burger on his lap.

“The Inflatables are a long running body of work that attempts to illustrate a loss of prowess of select iconic characters at the end of their cultural relevance. Each reduces the magnanimous idealism of the character to the pathetic form of a cold air inflatable - a form popularized by the used car dealership gorilla.” – Chad Person

These works also participate in the art historical dialogue; 1960s, artists such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg used pneumatic forms to challenge conventional assumptions about the role of materials in artworks.

Blow Up was the first major exhibition to be devoted solely to the artist’s inflatable sculptures.