Domestic Residue
Luis Martinez
Subdivision Art Gallery in Long Island City, NY, celebrated its first year through a group show called "Domestic Residue." David Melrose’s installation has both inspired and lent its title to the show. His piece–a recognizably modern structure in a cross-section view–provokes insight into the inner workings of the larger structures that we now call "home."
The idea of a new exhibition began when Melrose–who had created a phenomenal forest setting for the first opening of Subdivision last year–showed me an unfinished piece that he has been working on for some time. It was the challenge to figure out what was needed to complete it that prompted the commitment to another opening. Somehow, the search for new artists who could relate to the central idea, with their own art, went smoothly. Everything just naturally fell into place.
Matt Lucas’s Permanent Foliage depicts manufactured greenery in minute detail–confusing and calling into question our experience of reality. Tighe Clark’s Zoo, a spontaneous painting done over discarded surfaces collaged unto the wall, was executed live during opening night itself. Eva Daunius’s video of digital photographs provides us with textures, which taken out of context, create an open-ended emotive narrative. And Philip Ilatyovsky, who on opening night performed his music to accompany recycled sounds and images–left us with both a collage of memories and a spontaneous self-expression. All of the artists reach an understanding and creative use of the natural and the man-made, the pristine and the technological–in an intriguing combination of freshness and artificiality.
