For a solo show at the new gallery Scaramouche c/o Fruit and Flower Deli, located on New York's Lower East Side, I make five sculptures that drip paint continuously (click on the Sculpture section of this website for details of these). I design and install a grid-patterned floor that slowly collects the paint. A photograph of a gloved hand, its fingertips filled with paint, marks the back wall.

I insert an unannounced performance into the opening by creating a character to attend the event. Actress Laryssa Husiak plays this character, a woman with paint dripping from her purse. She walks around the exhibit and then lingers outside for a couple of hours while her dress is slowly stained.

A review of this show by Michael Wilson appears in the January 2010 Art Forum (print edition).

Click here for a review of this show in TimeOut New York.

Click here for a review of this show in White Hot Art.

Special thanks for production and installation assistance to David Frisco & Susan Sloan, Nayef Homsi, Javier Bosques, Austin Shull, Christian Maychack, Meghan Guthrie, Ellie Krakow, Davis Thompson-Moss, Geraldine Caizergues, David Maurice, Laryssa Husiak, and to Heather Shelley.

Jackson McDade runs the experimental gallery HQ in a storefront space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I created an installation that became a stage for a performance on the night of the opening.

I carpeted a section of the gallery in gray felt, and mounted a 30' long by 8' high canvas curtain just in front of the wall. The curtain is irrigated by a network of cast plastic tubes that drip liquid paint onto the canvas's surface.

For the opening, two performers - Enrico Wey and Ben Kerrick - sat at a table for three hours while paint dripped slowly from two troughs overhead, onto their backs and shoulders. They read blank newspapers, ripping pieces from it and passing sections to each other. At other times they stared into space and at each other, but they never acknowledged the audience.

My gratitude to Jackson McDade, Ben Kerrick, and Enrico Wey. Special thanks to Luke Bulman, Ken Landauer, Matthew Morgan, Nayef Homsi, Meghan Guthrie, and Heather Shelley.




Click here for an article about this recent work in Modern Painters.

Click here for a review of this project in ArtSlant.

Click here for a review of this project in the L Magazine.


Performance photographs by Heather Shelley.

solo exhibition with performance, created for The Hartnett Gallery at the University of Rochester. curated by Mara Gladstone

I was asked to develop a project for an unusual triangular-shaped gallery, designed by I.M. Pei in the 1970's. I built a series of structures that quoted from certain works - Frank Stella black paintings, Sol LeWitt cube constructions, , and Kenneth Noland stripe and chevron canvases.

The opening became a large-scale event. I choreographed five performers to re-arrange the works, but the audience did not know that when they arrived. As the crowd gathered, the performers emerged unexpectedly from the audience and started moving my sculptures around. They pulled all the pieces from the walls and started combining and clamping them together within the center of the space. Towards the end of the performance, they cut open portions of white sheeting tacked to the wall to reveal brightly-colored painted surfaces. They then took liquid paint (which matched the color revealed on the walls), climbed the scaffolding, and poured the paint through a trough hanging from the ceiling.


Big thanks to student performers Madeleine Cutrona, Chase Henson, Shannon McCarter, Scott Schulth, and Cristin Stephens.
Special thanks to Mara Gladstone, Max Finneran, Derek Rushton, Igor Siddiqui, Heather Layton, and Juliette Cezzar; and to the many students in the Department of Visual and Cultural Studies at U of R who helped with exhibition production.

Pocket Utopia, Brooklyn, NYC

The artist Austin Thomas opened a project space called Pocket Utopia. When Austin took on this ground-floor, storefront space, it contained the abandoned accoutrements of a hair salon and call center. I created a pre-demolition intervention in the space.

For the installation I place a series of sculptures and run a network of pipes that carry dripping paint through the space. At the center of the space, I build a steel, cage-like structure. For the opening, two performers, artist Meg Duguid and actor Mike Mekos move through the space as a dysfunctional couple. One sits inside the cage, gazing into a mirror while paint drips from the ceiling and into her outstretched hands. The other stands inside the old call center closet at the back of the space, talking on a fake phone and pouring paint into the network of tubes. The paint puddles in sinks and buckets and drizzles onto the floor.

For more information on the show and Pocket Utopia, click here.

Click here for a review of the show in jameswagner.com.

Click here for a review of the show in edwardwinkleman.com.

Much gratitude to Austin Thomas. Installation title created in conjunction with poet Temple Cone. Many thanks to Tomislav Butcovic, Susan Sloan and David Frisco, Michael Shannebrook, Meg Duguid and Mike Mekos, Matthew Morgan, Heather Shelley, and Igor Siddiqui.

project for the Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, Tallahassee

site-specific installation created for the exhibition Locating Secret Psychological Space, curated by Joelle Dietrick

The exterior wall of installation is coated with shiny plastic sheeting; the interior walls and floor are covered with white plastic fabric. A mirror appears on both sides of the installation. A black rubber tube interrupts the window’s mirrored surface. The tube terminates at the top of a stack of 100 Tallahassee phone books. Paint slowly drips out of the tube (rigged to drip for 30 days, a different color each day) and down a channel cut into the phone books, creating a waterfall of colored ooze that overflows the phone books' carved pages. Frame-like openings are cut into the surface of the books, revealing newspaper images culled from the news of the day.

Special thanks to museum preparator Wayne Vonada and to graduate student Becki Rutta for their assistance. Big big thanks to Owen Mundy and Joelle Dietrick.

Built at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY.
8.25 feet wide x 8.25 feet deep x 14 feet tall

Involuntary House was a monolithic, two-story structure built on the edge of a grove of trees. From its roof, a gutter channeled rainwater into an interior reservoir on the top floor. An internal mechanism sent the rainwater into six containers, where it was mixed with pigment. Colored paint, dripping from these containers to the lower level of the structure, hit a teetering tower of assembled construction trash.

Viewers could look through a variety of openings to peer at the interior of the structure. Illuminated from within, the house glowed at night.


With thanks for production assistance to: Alyson Baker, Robyn Donohue, Deb Fisher & the Socrates crew; Matthew Morgan, Igor Siddiqui, Gene VanDyke, & Marc VanDyke

Built at the Bard Exhibition Center, Red Hook, NY
Wood, sheetrock, plaster, latex paint, cardboard, plastic tubing, buckets, fabricated lighting fixtures, hardware

Built in and around a room 14 feet high x 14 feet wide x 14 feet deep, this installation contained exterior and interior elements. A window offered a view back and forth from outside to inside. A rectangular duct ran overhead and diagonally through the space, terminating on the installation's exterior. From this termination point, liquid paint rained continuously in three different colors. The paint rained onto a stacked pile of buckets and plaster, plastic, and styrofoam cups. The interior of the space contained a platform, made up of interlocking triangular shapes, upon which viewers could walk and sit. From this platform rose an oak chimney with a backlit hearth at its base. From the hearth, liquid paint oozed, a slow waterfall of paint flowing down a set of triangular stairs. High above, a hole was cut into the ceiling. Jagged shards of wood framed this hole, which revealed an illuminated attic space above the installation.

Special thanks for production assistance to: Matthew Morgan, Bryan Buryk, Igor Siddiqui and Mike Kwiecinszki; and to Meg Duguid, Elisa Lendvay, Josephine Pergola, Dominique Rey, Desi Santiago, and Josh Thorson.