Mattress Factory Opens Three New Distinct Exhibitions By Four Powerhouse Artists
The Mattress Factory announces the opening of three new distinct exhibitions in the Museum’s Monterey Annex from Pittsburgh-based artists Lenka Clayton & Phillip Andrew Lewis, Lydia Rosenberg, and Katie Bullock.
These four artists – whose works form a cohesive yet unintentional connection – were selected by 2021 Regional Open Call Visiting Curator Denise Markonish, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA.
Over the duration of collaborative duo Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis's The Museum Collects Itself, the trash generated by the normal operations of the Mattress Factory Museum will be redirected – stored, catalogued and displayed within the Monterey Annex Gallery – instead of being thrown away. The gallery will begin as a blank white space and will slowly fill up with the discarded materials of all aspects of institutional activities, which may include production waste from art installations, administrative office debris, deinstalled artworks, educational workshop materials, museum visitor detritus, obsolete office technology, among other things.
By collecting 10-months of trash with involvement from the entire staff of the museum, Clayton and Lewis make cultural waste evident while aestheticizing the discarded – sorting, baling, and piling into the gallery, as visitors traverse the material via diminishing pathways. After dunes of garbage and rubbish pile up to manifest in a behind the scenes “self-portrait” of the museum’s functionality, the gallery ends as it started: empty.
In Do this while I wait, Lydia Rosenberg presents a series of sculptures initially described in her ongoing project of writing a novel-as-sculpture. The project concentrates on the character of Annette, an artist who spends as much time making objects as she does listening to guided meditations, that in turn creates a narrative in which domestic cleaning objects are the key to decluttering her mental landscape.
At the Mattress Factory, Rosenberg exhibits the objects that fictional Annette has been making. The objects are hybrids, much like Annette: shredded books or cast crow’s feet become broom bristles, a lamp becomes formless, a pillowcase becomes a bucket, and ceramic spaghetti turns into a mop. These transmutations get at the heart of how we tend to care for objects rather than ourselves or other humans and how this is further complicated when the imaginary becomes material and vice versa.
For As Seen From the Surface, Katie Bullock brings her ongoing archive to life – projecting small videos interspersed with diagrammatic drawings brought from books and her videos/photographs, all in a geometric pattern. These galleries function as both observatory and library, offering the opportunity for Bullock to tell us her stories and to merge the personal with the universal.
Together the elements form a new cabinet of curiosities for the infinitesimal. There is symmetry in seeing the videos and drawings together as they tell a story of experience followed by the sometimes fruitless need to understand what just occurred. The shimmering graphite of the drawings catch the light, while the vellum’s transparency and buoyancy allow them to flutter as we pass by. This collection will grow throughout the life of the show to include experiences from Bullock’s time living in Pittsburgh.
The exhibitions will be on view through December 30, 2023.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis have solo and collaborative practices and have been working together since 2017. Their projects include a public gallery that is always closed, an 8ft long bronze plaque marking the history of their studio building over the last 600 million years, and most recently, the construction of a full-scale working lighthouse, encapsulated inside a burnt-out house. The couple live and work in Pittsburgh, PA.
lenkaclayton.com / phillipandrewlewis.com
Lydia Rosenberg is an artist currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work, primarily in sculpture, is concerned with the impact of language on our perception of physical things. She has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US and abroad in Belgium and Chile. She has published written and visual works. Her project of writing a novel as a way to make a sculpture began in 2018 and is ongoing. She is a co-founder of Anytime Dept., a now on pause artist-run exhibition project which was based in Cincinnati.
lydiarosenberg.net
Katie Bullock catalogs and works with observed “everyday” moments and phenomena, driven by the complexity of truth that taking note can reveal. She encourages viewers to engage with some of the most challenging questions through local noticing, and the often-surprising wonder and humility that comes with it. Recent solo exhibitions include Arguments Against the Existence of a Void, Albion College (December 2022). She currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA with her partner and two cats.
katiebullock.com
ABOUT DENISE MARKONISH
Denise Markonish is the Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at MASS MoCA. She has over twenty years of experience producing and commissioning large-scale and experiential exhibitions and publishing catalogues.
ABOUT THE MATTRESS FACTORY
The Mattress Factory is an artist-centered museum, international residency program and renowned producer and presenter of site-specific installation art. Located in Pittsburgh’s Northside, the Mattress Factory hosts artists from around the world and around the corner as they develop new works. In addition to revolving installations created by artists-in-residence, the Mattress Factory also is home to installations by Greer Lankton, James Turrell, Winifred Lutz, Yayoi Kusama and more.
mattress.org