Artist Spotlight :: LUCA BUVOLI

Instant Before Incident (Marinetti’s Drive 1908), 2008
metal, reinforced UV stable polyester resin, pigment, plexiglass
Ave Machina: Instant Before Incident, 2008
video, 5 minutes
Propaganda Poster (And Then He Would Say: Remember-E Lui Diceva: Ricordati) [Textured Turquoise Car with Vermillion Front], 2007
gouache, enamel and other media on acid-free grey etching paper, wood, plexiglass



Based on the car crash that inspired Marinetti’s revelation of the Futurist Manifesto in 1909, Luca Buvoli has created a sculptural work that depicts the 1908 Fiat in motion, the instant before the impact. Marinetti’s famous “crash” has been the subject of various critical interpretations (some even questioning the accidental nature of the event, apparently all set up in a theatrical way). This project gave Buvoli the opportunity to explode myths of masculinity and velocity associated with Futurism. While utilizing a futuristic form for the piece, Buvoli is, at the same time, pointing out his ambivalence about the cult of heroism that has grown out of this and associated art/historical event(s).



The sculpture is depicted in futuristic form; there is dynamism created by the multiple views of the same vehicle, as if captured frozen in time and motion, moving along a trajectory. This is the moment when physical, aesthetic and ideological barriers were broken. The car is breaking the speed limit of what it can maintain to hold the road. The red steel and the automobile form refer to Pittsburgh’s industrial past and pre-eminence in this material’s fabrication (around the same years of Futurism’s foundation) while the fiberglass has a more organic quality. It is translucent almost like green algae, giving the car a more “natural” skin.



The car and its occupant, the artist (not represented here), have broken free of gravity and catapulted into the unknown. The sculpture is freed from the floor and takes flight off the floor and out the gallery window. Buvoli also sees associations between the form of the work—the multiple cars—one following another and the fascination humans have with charismatic leaders. The cars follow the lead car out the window, like a flock of sheep or the blind followers of a totalitarian regime.



Buvoli, who works in a variety of media, created a single-channel video for this exhibition. Ave Machina: Instant Before Incident uses what he calls a “meta-futuristic approach.” The video is an intricately edited collage of images. Using visual tricks taken from early experimental film syntax, Buvoli intercuts straight photography, superimposed hand-drawn animation, archival footage and interviews with the art historian Christine Poggi and cultural historian Jeffrey Schnapp as they discuss Futurism’s birth in relation to the desire for exhilaration, speed and projection both physical and psychological.



INNER AND OUTER SPACE runs through January 11, 2009.

Neighborhood Songs :: Thursday, May 15

Did you know that some of Pittsburgh best-kept -secret songwriters call Pittsburgh's North Side home? Join us on May 15 for an evening of neighborhood songs penned and performed by Mexican War Streets residents.

Steven Foxbury (www.myspace.com/stevenfoxbury)
Jeffrey Inscho (www.myspace.com/lesonique)
Black Crash (www.myspace.com/blackcrash).

Your new favorite song could have been written by your neighbor!

Inner and Outer Space :: Review

Sunday's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review contained a nice review of Inner and Outer Space. The print edition showcased some great photos of works by Luca Buvoli, Allison Smith, Mark Garry and Sarah Oppenheimer.

ARTISTS MAKE NEW USE OF MATTRESS FACTORY
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | Sunday, May 11, 2008

Last month, visitors to the opening reception of the exhibition "Inner Outer Space" at the Mattress Factory couldn't help but stare at the floor in a room on the fourth floor. For, cut into it was a 6-foot-wide hole.

Looking down the hole, which is actually an artwork by New York City-based artist Sarah Oppenheimer, all one could see was the roof of a garage across the alley from the museum. That's because Oppenheimer had purposely directed the view to a third-floor window via a carefully crafted tunnel made of plywood that angled through the third-floor gallery below.

In a place known for pushing the limits, not to mention the boundaries, of its own space, this is the first time in the museum's 30-year history that an artist has reconfigured the building structure in this way. ( FULL STORY )

Artist Spotlight: Sarah Oppenheimer

Sarah Oppenheimer
610-3356, 2008
aircraft grade plywood, framing structure, view into neighboring yard across street



Sarah Oppenheimer opens apertures in existing architecture, modifying the recognizable modular units (such as rooms) that make up our standardized built world. Interested in the way that people navigate their environments through both familiar bodily experience and with the aid of navigational tools, like maps, Oppenheimer’s works alter the visitor’s experience and perception in the gallery space.

For this installation Oppenheimer created an opening in the floor of a small gallery on the fourth floor. This is the first time in the museum’s 30-year history that an artist has reconfigured the building structure in this way.

   

This aperture, or “wormhole,” as Oppenheimer refers to the type of hole she created, offers a new line of sight within the exhibition space and functions as both a hole and a screen directing the viewer’s gaze down and out the third floor window. The hole creates a disorienting sense of an impossible proximity between the fourth floor and the external world outside.

The space of display—the museum gallery—is transformed from a container for specific objects into a lensed view of the outside world. The fourth floor gallery floor and the third floor window are part of the work. The shaped hole in the interior floor extends through the armature, framing a vista out the side of the building. In this way Oppenheimer has created a zone for pictorial reflection. The view of the outside world is framed and is accepted as the work.

   

Oppenheimer alters our vision, alters our expectations. Like a film director she directs our gaze and moves it through her framing device. While everyone will have a different view through the hole, depending on their position in the gallery space and depending on their height, the viewer follows the sight line to see the view into a neighboring yard across the street.

The title of the work, 610-3556, is derived by reference to a typology or classification system created by the artist that describes, in graphic form, how the hole is perceptually perceived and the materials used to create it.

Inner and Outer Space runs through January 11, 2009.

Mark Garry and Dara Meyers-Kingsley on TV

Last Friday, Inner and Outer Space artist Mark Garry and curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley appeared on Pittsburgh Today Live to talk about the new exhibit. The segment can be viewed at the following URL:

http://kdka.com/video/?id=40587@kdka.dayport.com

Thank You.

Just a great big thank you to everyone who came out this past Friday for the opening of Inner and Outer Space. All nine artists and the entire MF staff worked extremely hard (and late into the night) to make sure this show would not disappoint. And it doesn't. But don't take our word for it...come see for yourself.

Images of the final, complete installations should be posted this week or early next, so stay tuned. Inner and Outer Space runs through January 11, 2009.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CATASTROPHE: Review

Illustrations of Catastrophe and Remote Times is reviewed by Melissa Kuntz in this week's Pittsburgh City Paper.

The current manifestation of the "Gestures" series at the Mattress Factory, intriguingly titled Illustrations of Catastrophe and Remote Times, includes artworks and installations by 21 participants, not all of whom (as per the series' premise) were trained as visual artists. They include a graphic designer, a robotics researcher, a musician, a window designer and a doll maker.

An exhibition of artworks by such an assortment of individuals ought to generate interest through sheer variety. Guest curator Heather Pesanti, who's assistant curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, raised the conceptual bar by asking each participant to read a passage from "The Domain of the Great Bear," by the illustrious artists Mel Bochner and Robert Smithson, published in 1966 in the periodical Art Voices and premised on the theory that a magazine offers an alternative place for the display of artwork. ( FULL ARTICLE )

JUST ANNOUNCED: Illustrations of Catastrophe and Remote Times is extended through June 15, 2008.