Karen Forney, Mattress Factory education intern, shares her
thoughts:
This is an exciting time at the Mattress Factory! If you
haven’t visited in a while, there’s a lot of great new work to see: THREE brand
new exhibitions across three buildings, and all included in your museum
admission! That’s a pretty good deal don’t you think? To sweeten the deal, I
wanted to share my thoughts on the new exhibitions to give you an idea of what
to expect when you visit.
The first thing you will notice when you come to the
Mattress Factory is a large brown creature in the parking lot. That
Godzilla-sized chupacabra is actually a really big prehistoric sloth, a found
object installed by artist Scott Hocking, one of nine artists participating in the
museum’s residency program. It welcomes visitors coming to the main building to
see the show Detroit: Artists in Residence.
500 Sampsonia
“Here to see the museum today? Great!”
Your friendly Visitor Services Coordinator, Maria, will
welcome you to the museum, take your admission, and suggest you start on the 4th
floor and work your way down. So grab your handouts, affix your museum tab to
your collar, and head up to 4.
As you step out of the elevator on the 4th floor
and let the doors close behind you, pause and listen; you’ll notice a variety
of mingling sounds from each of the four new Detroit installations. You’ll hear a faint murmuring of voices and
music from the hanging cans in Jessica Freylinghuysen’s My City is Your City, the chiming of clocks, bells, and excerpts of
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from
Frank Pahl’s 1913 Revisited in Three Parts,
the ominous clanging and buzzing of power tools in Nicola Kuperus & AdamLee Miller’s Diptyching, and, more
subtly, the occasional clicks of heaters and electronic devices transforming
wind turbine and solar power into heat that warms the Michigan picture rocks in
Design 99’s Following the Sun 2.
Sound is what linked these pieces for me.
On the third floor you turn to your left from the elevator
to see Cured by Russ Orlando. A
blue-lit room enshrines auto parts encrusted in salt, hanging silently from shiny
new meat hooks. In contrast to the 4th floor, this room is quiet.
Dead quiet, except for the stray pieces of salt that crunch between the soles
of your shoes and the white tile of the floor.
1414 Monterey
When you’ve finished seeing the Detroit show and head back to the lobby, Maria will check in with you to
see how you’re doing and tell you how to get to the annex gallery at 1414
Monterey to see Janine Antoni’s solo show Within.
What interests me most about Janine’s installation is her
use of vast amounts of beautiful empty space. The entrance features a
completely empty room leading towards a massive tree trunk and root system that
has been split in half--one half on the floor, the other half floating into the
ceiling. What you will discover upstairs is that the tree passes completely
through the ceiling and up through the floor to become part of the table
holding curious cast resin body parts and bones in Graft. Hip bones appear in several of Antoni’s installations in the
building, so be on the lookout: hip bones are what shaped the raku fired bowls
in Gertrude, Margaret, and Mary, and what may seem like an unused room has a
bigger surprise for those who are patient and take a moment to consider the
space in Crowned. You may find
yourself wanting to sit for an extended period of time watching Honey Baby, a collaboration with
choreographer Stephen Petronio. That’s ok; it’s what the bench is for!
516 Sampsonia
First of all, this building is amazing, and I think this new
installation is a lovely compliment to the previous installation at this site
before the building was renovated. The previous installation, In the Dwelling-House, artist Ruth Stanford
researched the previous inhabitants of the house and installed tombstone-like
memorials in the windows listing each family members’ names and occupations.
Similar to Stanford’s work, the webs in Trace of Memory gives form to the unseen memories of this house.
Every room is a cocoon of black yarn suspending different objects in each room
– a desk, a pile of books, old suitcases, chairs, a wedding dress, a single
pristine white bed. Exploring this house reminded me of the heroine in Jane
Austen’s Northanger Abbey; I felt
like Catherine exploring the abbey and wondering excitedly if it was haunted,
if there were any secret passageways I could discover, and what really happened
in this house so long ago? In my quest, I discovered a storage closet, the
bathroom, and some quirky dead-ends that you’ll always find in a fabulous old
house. Every ambient sound made my hair stand on end; was that just another
visitor walking around upstairs, or a ghost? I could have walked forever
through that building; the presence that exists in those spaces where Shiota
has woven her webs is truly haunting.
For me, installation art is unique because it is experiential.
Everyone’s experience will be different, and what activates the artwork is your
participation. When you go to an installation art museum, you’re not going to
just see the artwork. You are going
to complete the artwork by
interacting with it. I think of it as a collaboration with the artist. When you
think of yourself as a collaborator with the artist, that immediately makes
your participation important and relevant. And I think that’s awesome!
So, fellow potential collaborators, I’ve shared my experience
of the new exhibitions; now I want to hear about yours. Come visit the Mattress
Factory and get a chance to be a part of this great new work in Pittsburgh, and
let me know what you think by e-mailing me at eduintern@mattress.org! And stay tuned to special events coming up
including ARTLabs, performances, and other educational opportunities.
