Factory Installed 2019

Featuring works at the Mattress Factory by Tra Bouscaren, Naomi Draper, Nathan Hall, Patte Loper, Pepe Mar, Adam Milner, Patrick Robideau, Jon Rubin and Sohrab Kashani

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Night Blooms (2019) by Tra BouscarenMattress Factory

"Night Blooms," Tra Bouscaren, 2019

Night Blooms engages spectacle at the crossroads of waste culture and the surveillance state. Orphaned objects form the material basis of Bouscaren's work.

Night Blooms (2019) by Tra BouscarenMattress Factory

His site-responsive process begins with salvaging local materials from the waste steam that bear the symbolic, indexical, and poetic resonance with what he identifies as the toxic underbelly of American culture.

Night Blooms (2019) by Tra BouscarenMattress Factory

Aggregating these waste materials into networks of provisional assemblage, he weaves surveillance equipment through the sculpture such that it captures people who approach the work.

Holding Fragments (2019) by Naomi DraperMattress Factory

"Holding Fragments," Naomi Draper, 2019

The central element of Naomi Draper's installation Holding Fragments is composed of thousands of pressed Daucus Carota flowers.

Holding Fragments (2019) by Naomi DraperMattress Factory

This flower is known commonly as Queen Anne's Lace.

Holding Fragments (2019) by Naomi DraperMattress Factory

These plants were gathered from sites around the city of Pittsburgh and were woven together to form an interlaced structure of fabric.

You're Not the Boss of Me (2019) by Nathan HallMattress Factory

"You're Not the Boss of Me," Nathan Hall, 2019

Hall’s installation is in two parts. The primary piece is “You're Not the Boss of Me,” a harpsichord suspended in bondage rope in the gallery, with soundtrack from the instrument. There's also "About Place,” a choir piece composed for singing in the Mattress Factory parking lot, with texts from the museum's founder Barbara Luderowski.

You're Not the Boss of Me (2019) by Nathan HallMattress Factory

Both pieces explore site-specific aspects of music and add visual elements. The harpsichord work is about the balance between being a classically-trained composer and contemporary queer artist, and where those identities overlap.

You're Not the Boss of Me (2019) by Nathan HallMattress Factory

The choir piece is his first vocal work to explore singers moving in formations outdoors. He wants the movements and the text to anchor the music into a specific place and time, as well as to be a tribute to Barbara and the creative spaces she has made possible.

The Other Apartment (2019) by Sohrab Kashani & Jon RubinMattress Factory

"The Other Apartment," Sohrab Kashani & Jon Rubin, 2019

The Other Apartment is a collaborative project between Pittsburgh-based artist Jon Rubin and Tehran-based artist Sohrab Kashani that occurs in two sites simultaneously. The work features a dual site-specific space: Kashani’s apartment in Tehran, Iran, and an exact replica of that apartment and all of its contents— using a team of fabricators, handmade reproductions, and 3D printing—at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh.

The Other Apartment (2019) by Sohrab Kashani & Jon RubinMattress Factory

For the past 11 years, Kashani has used his apartment as a space for exhibiting contemporary art and as an artist residency, one of the first of its kind in the country.

The Other Apartment (2019) by Sohrab Kashani & Jon RubinMattress Factory

When the two apartments are activated in the US and Iran, The Other Apartment will house concurrent art ventures, producing exhibitions, programs, and events—in each case, every object, video, and performance that happens in one space is meticulously duplicated for the other.

Laboratory for Other Worlds (2019) by Patte LoperMattress Factory

"Laboratory for Other Worlds," Patte Loper, 2019

Inspired by broader ideas put forth in recent movements concerning social and environmental justice, this immersive installation approaches the vast number of protentional outcomes of personal/political/societal choices through the analogously constructed form of a science fiction film set.

Laboratory for Other Worlds (2019) by Patte LoperMattress Factory

Following a methodology of surrealist automatism—a process of suppressing conscious control over the process of creating—the formation of the space and its representation display complex, structured, and peculiarly playful relationships between the intuitive and the psychological, between the human body and the subconscious.

Laboratory for Other Worlds (2019) by Patte LoperMattress Factory

The piece intertwines hand-built structures, paintings and sculptures made from humble materials with video and audio elements in part by solar panel technology.

Pepe Mar-5923 (2019) by Pepe MarMattress Factory

"Dragonfruit," Pepe Mar, 2019

In this body of work, Mar absorbs, and ultimately scatters back to his viewer, the layered and disparate historical references which pollinate his career.

Dragonfruit (2019) by Pepe MarMattress Factory

He cites the history of art and Indigenous artistic practices; of fashion and the queer club scene of the last forty years; of the Mattress Factory itself; and of his own fifteen year practice.

Dragonfruit (2019) by Pepe MarMattress Factory

Creating a series of custom textiles with images borrowed from these diverse sources, Mar collages, sews, and paints this material, and ultimately brings together these distinct imageries to derive entirely new contexts from the recombined originals.

"Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself" (2019) by Adam MilnerMattress Factory

"Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself," Adam Milner, 2019

The exhibition gleans its title from an Instagram post by Marie Kondo, whose books and Netflix show about tidying up have made her a household name.

"Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself" (2019) by Adam MilnerMattress Factory

The quote, and Kondo's empire in general, is a reminder of our complicated relationships to the things around us, and how we cling to things – but also, how they sometimes cling back.

"Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself" (2019) by Adam MilnerMattress Factory

Milner's sprawling and idiosyncratic practice draws upon aesthetics of museum and retail display, domestic interiors, and TV shows like Hoarders and Kondo's Tidying Up.

These new sculptures employ various strategies of containment, and point to the paradox that efforts to contain something can embody dueling philosophies of care and control, love and domination.

All Is Not Forgotten (2019) by Patrick RobideauMattress Factory

"All Is Not Forgotten," Patrick Robideau, 2019

The sculptural and installation work of Patrick Robideau uses architecture and space as devices through which to explore issues of memory and its emotional residue. Carefully and methodically constructed, Robideau's forms often combine a seductive material allure that attracts the viewer, with a physical construction that keeps the viewer at a certain distance. In this way, the work often replicates the process of a memory that draws us in but can only be partially accessed.

All Is Not Forgotten (2019) by Patrick RobideauMattress Factory

While his works often feature architectural constructions, they are less specific locales and more like the terrain of half remembered dreams. The installation is about the story of a house and its inhabitants. The memory of something that can only be found in parts. The viewer will never see the whole picture at once, but must piece together the information they have received.

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