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Art is Trash is Art at The Mattress Factory

Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis' "The Museum Collects Itself" (detail), at the Mattress Factory.
Bill O'Driscoll
/
90.5 WESA
Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis' "The Museum Collects Itself" (detail), at the Mattress Factory.

This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O'Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon.

“The Museum Collects Itself,” by Lenka Clayton and Philip Andrew Lewis, is the type of artwork that will make some people angry. It consists simply of the Mattress Factory Monterey Annex’s first-floor gallery, painted stark-white and then gradually filled with all the trash generated by the museum’s daily operations during the show’s run.

At the time of this past Friday’s bustling opening reception, the amount of garbage was modest: two piles, each about the size of what a large household might produce for that week’s curbside pickup (though boasting notably more empty spray-paint cans than most families would discard).

Trash presented as art is hardly new, and grousing about it is surely as old as the practice itself. (“My janitor could do that!”) Likewise, complaints about the seeming artlessness of any given work. And indeed, someone walking in unawares on “The Museum Collects Itself” last week could’ve been forgiven for wondering whether the museum had merely failed to tidy up in time for the reception.

That surely won’t be the case a few weeks or months from now, as the contents of the 91 bins emptied daily in the museum (minus food scraps and biohazards) accumulate. When the exhibit concludes, 10 months hence, the space — visible through the gallery’s storefront picture windows — should make quite a statement.

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Most straightforwardly, this work of conceptual/performance art will highlight how much stuff one nonprofit arts institution uses and, by implication, the profusion of waste in our wider consumer culture. But the Pittsburgh-based Clayton said she and Lewis also had another goal in mind: turning the museum inside out. At the reception, Clayton said the work is an “institutional critique” of the convention of the pristine gallery, one that puts on display what’s usually hidden.

She chuckled when I asked whether she worried the museum’s Mexican War Streets neighbors might call building inspectors about the show.

“The Museum Collects Itself” was one of three installations that opened that night as part of a regional open-call show curated by Denise Markonish, senior curator and director of exhibitions for Mass MOCA. The other two installations were less conceptual and — in traditional aesthetic terms — more appealing.

Katie Bullock’s “As Seen From the Surface” is a gorgeous, two-room piece exploring the beauty and wonder to be found in tiny, everyday things. The Michigan-based artist’s small, precisely rendered graphite drawings and diagrams, exploring things like the size of raindrops or the delicate tracks a starfish makes in sand, are rendered on sheets of vellum displayed behind a series of large, wall-and floor-mounted glass panels.

And then there’s Pittsburgh-based Lydia Rosenberg’s “Do this while I wait,” a two-room installation of witty sculptural interpretations of household objects that renders the familiar unfamiliar. A used paperback is splayed out to serve as the head of a mop. Onionskins become tiny lampshades. And that broom leaning in the corner has individual bristles and a long, sinuous handle — both crafted from little alphabet beads strung together.

In their half-darkened second-floor room, these couple dozen objects slouch and loiter like refugees from the Island of Misfit Tools — or trash that’s at last found its purpose.

More information on the exhibit is here.

Rube Goldberg Challenge Weekend at the Children's Museum, March 11-12.
Courtesy of The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
Rube Goldberg Challenge Weekend at the Children's Museum, March 11-12.

WESA's Weekend Picks

  1. Canadian troupe Le Patin Libre blends contemporary dance with high-level figure-skating in three performances at the UPMC Rink at PPG Place, presented by Pittsburgh Dance Council, Thu., March 9 - Sat., March 11.
  2. Amanda Filippelli’s “The Remembering Room,” an interactive art exhibit about processing grief and loss, opens at Sharpsburg’s Atithi Studios Thu., March 9, and runs through April 16.
  3. Multitalented, Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello performs at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center’s Soul Sessions series, Fri., March 10.
  4. Kentucky-based filmmaker Sylvia Ryerson screens “Calls from Home,” her short documentary about how rural prison expansion harms prisoners and their families; a panel discussion follows, Sat., March 11, at Alphabet City, on the North Side.
  5. Kid-led teams compete to build wackily inventive machines in the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh 2023 Rube Goldberg Challenge Weekend, Sat., March 11, and Sun., March 12.
  6. A LatinX couple new to their D.C. neighborhood clashes with longtime white residents over yard plantings in Karen Zacarías’ play “Native Gardens,” a comedy making its Pittsburgh premiere at City Theatre, Sat., March 11 - April 2.
Bill is a long-time Pittsburgh-based journalist specializing in the arts and the environment. Previous to working at WESA, he spent 21 years at the weekly Pittsburgh City Paper, the last 14 as Arts & Entertainment editor. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and in 30-plus years as a journalist has freelanced for publications including In Pittsburgh, The Nation, E: The Environmental Magazine, American Theatre, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Bill has earned numerous Golden Quill awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. He lives in the neighborhood of Manchester, and he once milked a goat. Email: bodriscoll@wesa.fm