Patrick Meagher, Compost Series (Spring Cleaning, Late Summer, Early Autumn, Late Autumn)
Digital prints on canvas, 2013, Installation view at {TEMP} Space, NY
Photograph by Katy Hamer

{TEMP} Art Space is a two floor art gallery in Tribeca, on Walker Street, just south of Canal Street in Manhattan. Recently on view was a large group exhibition curated by Executive Director and Curator of NURTUREart in Brooklyn, Marco Antonini.  Titled Welcome To The Real, the exhibition featured a selection of thirteen artists and varied artwork ranging from photography to installation and video. Entering on the first floor was a large installation by art duo Nanna Debois-Buhl & Liz Linden titled Suitcase Wisdom II, consisting of 29 suitcases in diagonal rows. The suitcases, one next to the other, extended the width of the gallery and while recognizable as suitcases, they took on another form in the context of the exhibition detaching from travel and relating more to sculptural form. Another piece on the first floor was Momentum, 2013 by Jessica Segall, a series of four long wooden oars, standing against the raw red brick and not far from Suitcase Wisdom II, the work was similarly relevant to movement stilled and an object that is necessary for a particular type of travel, if one representing air, the other water.

Nobutaka Aozaki, Rice Sculptures (sculptures on light table, right and video, left), 2013
Installation view at {TEMP} Space, NY
Photograph by Katy Hamer

On the lower level, a surprisingly expansive space opens up, possibly a basement in it’s former life. High ceilings and broad walls allowed the artwork to be interspersed generously on the walls and floor. A bit more specific in its curatorial vision this section of Welcome To The Real buzzed with a giddy silence and subtle humor as filtered through an invisible ghost-like presence. Setting the tone was Sound of Dust, 2013 by Slobodan Stosic a hanging microphone that begged to be shouted into, however upon closer inspection was not plugged into an electrical outlet.
From an accompanying text by the artist:

The amount of dust depends on the composition of air, the age of the house, the quality of the material, the presence/absence of people. The opening of windows, air movements, the wind and draught reduce the amount of dust. House-dust consists of people’s skin cells, nails, pollen, human hair, paper fibres and anything else around.    

The silence was unable to be recorded as was the movement. It is understood to be as regular as breath, and as present as what we understand to be empty. The work alludes to participation and in the disappointment at realizing the microphone is not turned on or plugged in, the viewer is still participating by moving through the space and shedding invisible bits of skin and hair, leaving dust behind.

Gabriele Picco, Banana Carpet, Banana peels, 2013
Installation view at {TEMP} Space, NY
Photograph by Katy Hamer

Adding to the humorist element of the exhibition, Gabriele Picco’s Banana Carpet, 2013, is just what one might imagine it to be based on it’s title, an area composed of sprawled out banana peels in what could be described as a carpet. Toying with the restraint of participation, the work taunts its’ audience mimicking a useful and functional object with banana peels, known in slapstick comedy acts for allowing all who step on the banana to fall. Most likely ending up in a mass on the floor, probably flushed cheeks due to embarrassment, Banana Carpet allows for such ridiculous, imaginary scenarios while also dealing with temporality and specificness (smell, texture, appearance) that is due to change with time. Perfectly paired and in the same space yet not next to one another, was Compost Series by Patrick Meagher, also 2013. The series of four digital prints on canvas each contain various decaying organic materials, filling the rectangular space from edge to edge. Cropped and focusing on a particular section of arbitrary piles, the images are beautifully composed and having been printed on canvas, aesthetically correspond with both a photographic and painterly dialogue.

Slobodan Stosic, Sound of Dust,  Microphone and
text on pedastal, 2013
Installation view at {TEMP} Space, NY
Photograph by Katy Hamer

The show closed Saturday, March 30th, 2013 and included works by: Nobutaka Aozaki, Conor Backman, Nanna Debois-Buhl and Liz Linden, Lisa Fairstein, Patrick Meagher, William Miller, Mamiko Otsubo, Gabriele Picco, Netta Sadovsky, Jessica Segall, Helmut Smits, Slobodan Stosic, curated by Marco Antonini.

More soon!
xo