Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 5:19AM |  14°
MENU
Advertisement
Meg Webster's mixed media installation
11
MORE

Mattress Factory marks 40 years of unpredictable art

Mattress Factory

Mattress Factory marks 40 years of unpredictable art

An encounter with the unpredictable — a visual, a thought, a configuration — is a hallmark of a  Mattress Factory visit and that titillating tension hovers over visitors touring the North Side museum’s 40th anniversary exhibition.

The six artists selected for this milestone show reflect the range of expression that has been presented by the museum over four decades, from the enthusiastically immersive to the conceptually engaging.

The museum’s focus has been on site-specific installation art typically made by an artist or artists in residence. In early years, visiting artists stayed in the “Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence” that were created in 1988 by exhibiting artist Allan Wexler.

Advertisement

The museum has since opened a residency unit elsewhere in the neighborhood, but Mr. Wexler’s ingeniously designed rooms remain as part of a small but select permanent collection.

His current exhibition, “Sculpting Gravity,” comprises work from various periods that reveal a wry sense of humor and an inquiring mind that disrupts conventional ways of thinking (or not) about our world. Levels and wedges re-orient assumptions about gravity in three-dimensional works like “Slanting Table/Reslanting China.” Beautifully rendered imagery like “Monolith with Wedges,” from a recent series of hand-worked inkjet prints, “Breaking Ground,” raise questions about our impact upon and relationship to the land.

In the adjacent gallery, Meg Webster’s “Solar Grow Room” is a sensual bath of color, form and scent. Known for the earthworks she exhibited at the museum in 1984, the artist this time has organic matter living and thriving under a bank of LED grow lights powered by an off-grid solar electrical system. The lights give the room a rosy cast and distorting Mylar-lined walls suggest aquarium as well as terrarium.

Ms. Webster was inspired by the decline of honeybees due to habitat loss and the overuse of pesticides. The original plants will move to a nearby yard in the spring to provide blossoms for native bee populations. At the exhibition’s end, an indoor replacement planting and the planters will found a second bee plot.

Advertisement

Cuban Yoan Capote, who exhibited in 2004, will install work in the museum’s lower level early next year. In the meantime, enjoy Ezra Masch's held-over "Stations," an uncanny simulation of movement, as though one were standing in a subway train as it pulls out of the station and gains speed.

The remaining artworks are at the 1414 Monterey St. satellite gallery a block away.

One encounters Vanessa German’s “sometimes we. cannot. be. with. our. bodies.” Text fills the building’s windows. On one side of the entry is the poetic, seemingly stream of consciousness commentary which she performs nationally and has dubbed "spoken word opera." On the other, quotes from the writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and novelist Yaa Gyasi.

An African-American and Homewood resident, Ms. German is founder of the Art House, a creative space for neighborhood children. Her mixed media sculpture, exhibited at the museum in 2005, addressed issues related to racism and to ancestral history, and she continues to explore those here.

Inside are several wall-hung female busts. Painted white, their full lips are made of cowrie shells and their elaborate hair arrangements are integrated with objects that stereotypically represent black and white culture. The effect is an eerie blending of mounted trophy heads and the neoclassical busts of 18th-century French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.

But her tour de force is a parade of vividly colored figures formed of countless found objects that would be carnivalesque, even festive, except that the figures are headless and therefore grotesque rather than celebratory. A soundtrack speaks to unwarranted deaths of black or gay individuals.

Continue up the stairs to David Pohl’s evocative “furniture music,” which gives visual form to the music of Erik Satie, punctuating the room like ringing church bells or a ticking clock. The room’s splotchy wallpaper, withered and dried flora and rusted chair reference the French composer’s desolate late years. Mr. Pohl exhibited at the museum in 2001.

David Ellis also evokes place in the swirling abstracts and oversized birds of “Summer Quintet #17,” a series of motion-filled, intensely layered and colored paintings made during a four-month residency in Florida after Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016. He exhibited at the museum in 2008.

A special component of the anniversary exhibition comprises artworks and other materials from the “Greer Lankton Archive of the Mattress Factory, 1975-96,” which will be covered in a future article. Don’t miss that, the permanent collection works and Dennis Maher’s three-story “A Second Home” in the 516 Sampsonia Way satellite gallery.

Note that timed tickets (free with museum admission) are assigned on weekends for the Maher work and James Turrell’s “Pleiades” in the permanent collection. A cafe serves coffee and lunch.

“New Installations: 40th Year” continues through July 29. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. Admission is $20, seniors and students $15, veterans $10 and ages 5 and under and members free. Half-price admission for residents of 15212, 15214 and 15233 zip codes and on Tuesdays. Information: www.mattress.org or 412-231-3169.

M. Thomas: mthomas@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1925.

First Published: November 24, 2017, 2:00 p.m.

RELATED
SHOW COMMENTS (0)  
Join the Conversation
Commenting policy | How to Report Abuse
If you would like your comment to be considered for a published letter to the editor, please send it to letters@post-gazette.com. Letters must be under 250 words and may be edited for length and clarity.
Partners
Advertisement
Sidequest on 44th in Lawrenceville on Dec. 27, 2024.
1
a&e
Canceled show finds ex-Misfits singer Michale Graves lashing out about being purged from Pittsburgh
The Federal Bureau of Investigation seal outside the headquarters in Washington, D.C.
2
opinion
Vanni Cappelli: The FBI purge could lead to another 9/11
Head coach Mike Tomlin and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith watch a receivers and defensive backs drill at Steelers Minicamp at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex Thursday, June 13, 2024.
3
sports
Gerry Dulac: Next season’s major decisions loom this week for Mike Tomlin, Steelers staff
A small public audience listened as Pittsburgh Public Schools released final recommendations for its facilities utilization plan during the education committee meeting at the PPS Administration Building in Oakland on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024.
4
news
Pittsburgh Public Schools considering reinstating virtual testimony following months of pushback
A protester waves a sign opposing Trump administration policies during a protest at the intersection of Murray and Forbes Avenues in Squirrel Hill Monday, Feb. 17, 2025.
5
news
Presidents Day protest in Pittsburgh takes aim at Trump policies
Meg Webster's mixed media installation "Solar Grow Room" in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.  (Mattress Factory)
A detail of Vanessa German's mixed media installation "sometimes we. cannot be. with. our. bodies." in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.  (Mattress Factory)
A view of David Pohl's mixed media installation "furniture music" in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
Detail of Vanessa German's mixed media installation "sometimes we. cannot be. with. our. bodies." in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.  (Mattress Factory)
A component of David Ellis' "Summer Quintet #17," Roscoe Off Broadway scenic paint on canvas. It appears in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
A component of David Ellis' "Summer Quintet #17," Rosco Off Broadway scenic paint on canvas. It appears in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
A component of David Ellis' "Summer Quintet #17," Rosco Off Broadway scenic paint on canvas. It appears in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
A view of Vanessa German's mixed media installation "sometimes we. cannot be. with. our. bodies." in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.  (Mattress Factory)
A view of Vanessa German's mixed media installation "sometimes we. cannot be. with. our. bodies."  (Mattress Factory )
Allan Wexler's "Scaffold Shoes' of 1989 from "30 Proposals for a Picnic Area." It's among works in his "Sculpting Gravity," a mixed media presentation in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
A view of David Pohl's mixed media installation "furniture music" in the exhibition "New Installations: 40th Year" at the Mattress Factory museum.
Mattress Factory
Advertisement
LATEST ae
Advertisement
TOP
Email a Story