Category: Installation
Scott Jarrett
OK-RM x Nike
Hunters Go Hungry
Emmanuel Plougoulm
Tom Ngo
Glitch
1,521 Donuts
As viewers enter the courtyard, they are faced with an 8-foot by 60-foot freestanding wall. The front of the wall is pristine, with 1,521 donuts hung in a grid formation at perfect 6-inch intervals. The back of the wall is unfinished and practical, with visible framing, water barrels (for stabilization), angled supports, and a view of the hardware used to hang the donuts. The title, Old-Fashioned, both identifies the variety of donut hanging on the wall (the most basic and elemental in Dunkin’ Donuts’ lineup), and raises the question of what “old-fashioned” might mean in a contemporary-art context. Old-Fashioned was first presented from December 2-5, 2009 at the Rubell Family Collection and subsequently in 2010 at the LA County Museum of Art.
Old-Fashioned by Jennifer Rubell.
Sam Songailo
Immersive and relentless, the paintings, videos and installations of Sam Songailo arrest our attention through both their sheer intensity and their tremendous associative powers. While clearly linked to a number of key antecedents (the work of Bridget Riley and the wall paintings of Sol LeWitt for example), Songailo’s work employs a distinctly personal aesthetic that owes as much to various imagined futures of film and literature as it does to the past. A number of commentators (including Songailo himself) have highlighted the futuristic character of the artist’s work, but to what future does it belong? Not the ray-gun Gothic of 1950s science-fiction, nor a post- apocalyptic dystopia. Songailo’s vision more closely resembles what we thought the future might be like in the eighties: the neon noir of Blade Runner, the cyberspace of Tron, even the 2015 posited by Back to the Future II (at the time of writing, amusingly imminent).
When I was little I wanted to be…
Near the University of Turku is a pedestrian/bike path under the train tracks and highway. It’s nicknamed Uraputki, or “Career Path”, because it is a popular route that students take from their residences to the university. To remind students of the larger picture, this project transforms the path into an interactive space with fill-in-the-blank sentences stenciled on the pavement that say “When I was little I wanted to be ____. Today I want to be ____.” in Finnish, Swedish, and English. Passersby can use colored chalk to write directly on the pavement and reflect upon their larger life journey, as well as learn about the lives and goals of the people around them. Created with temporary spray chalk.