Pressure Drop for Richard Stands (a history of one thing to another in lemon-aidedness): a self-producing exhibition by Phoebe Washburn
1 March–26 May 2013
Kunsthallen Brandts
Brandts Torv 1
5000 Odense, Denmark
In two adjoining exhibition rooms at Kunsthallen, covering 800 square meters, the American artist Phoebe Washburn will create two installations linked by an ecosystem. In one of the rooms, at the height of four meters, an apartment will be installed inside a wooden construction. During opening hours, it will be inhabited by two people who will prepare food, update their social profiles, play the guitar, embroider, or play ping pong, depending on their interest. They will also be serving energy drinks to exhibition visitors. Via “organs” and tubes, the waste water from housekeeping usage is cleansed on its way to the adjoining room and a row of woven hospital beds. In the beds small shoots are grown, later to be replanted and tended to, some under better conditions than others.
The exhibition is titled Pressure Drop for Richard Stands (a history of one thing to another in lemon-aidedness). This artful title refers to several stories which—like the lemonade served—spill from the apartment down into the Gatorade cups handed to visitors. Also contained in the title is the well known misinterpretation of the American Pledge of Allegiance, turning “…to my flag and the republic for which it stands” into Richard Stands.
Visitors can book a stay inside the installation
It is essential to the exhibition’s eco-system that there are people staying inside the installation. Their cooking and use of water is what starts and drives the eco-system. Likewise, the people writing updates on social media ensure that the exhibition’s narrative is kept alive and spreading like rings in water:
“…a history of one thing to another.”
At the Brandts ticket desk, visitors who choose to do so will be able to buy a ticket and book a time to stay in the apartment for either a half or a whole day. Booking and the sale of tickets start Monday, 18 February.
Opening
The exhibition opens on 28 February at 5pm.
Visual artist and professor Lone Hoyer Hansen will give the opening speech.
An exhibition catalogue featuring photos of the installation process and texts by professor Yvette Brackman and editor and art critic Andrew Russeth will be available on April 1st.
About the artist
Phoebe Washburn (b. 1973, New York) has enjoyed a meteoric career, from the Whitney and the Guggenheim to several other major museums. She works with recycled products to create large-scale works that make up self-contained, biotope-like systems. Her primitive-looking and oversized constructions contain intricately calculated processes connecting machines and objects: well functioning—but also illogical—systems composed with scientific know-how and humour, lending her works the character of something monstrous and self-sufficient, having a life of their own.
Phoebe Washburn’s intention is to create artworks which are partly self-productive. She works with circulation processes and strategies for sustainability transformed into artworks. Encounters between contradictory elements of growth and decay, recycling and detritus, are combined with surprising, monumental sculptural forms. From an art-theoretical point of view, Washburn’s form of expression can be seen as a further development of arte povera (detritus and recycling), process art (circulation, growth, change) and the systemic aspects of post-minimalism (technology, sociology, ecology).
This will be the third time Phoebe Washburn exhibits in Europe. In 2007 she created a large laboratory at Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, and in 2009, at Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, she constructed a factory-like unit with organic production.
