"Pillow Talk"
D. Dominick Lombardi
James Hyde, Large Air Cushion, 2002. Vinyl, acrylic on linen, electric blower, 180 X 144 X 288 inches
Solvent Space has quickly become Richmond, Virginia’s hot new venue because of its experimental nature and overtly industrial feel. For its first show, installation artist James Hyde transformed the main gallery space. Hyde placed Large Air Cushion (2002), a painted linen, 20 foot by 30-foot pillowcase around a vinyl bladder that is inflated to about ten feet in height with a barrel fan. The fan, which turns on about every 15 minutes, replaces the air that seeps slowly from the pillow. These periodic changes, the subtle slow heaving action makes it appear as though the work itself is breathing.
Hyde sees this work as a landscape painted in loose veils of color, not unlike the paintings of J. M. W. Turner. The gallery’s unique elevated viewing platform stands some 12 feet off the ground. Visitors can climb a spiral staircase to reach this platform in order to view Large Air Cushion from above. At the opening, I watched the visitors from this lofty vantage point as they crowded around the perimeter of Hyde’s creation. The work’s absurd scale (it takes up most of the floor space and lacks any tangible pillow function) gives the work its weight and its humor.
And this is the artist’s intention, to view the domestic object, like a pillow, in isolation, naked and unable to function in any preconceived way. The pillow’s lack of functionality, its awkward oversized appearance, evokes the conflicts of force, abundance and gluttony–issues that polarize this nation.
In an adjacent room sits a second, somewhat smaller 12-foot by 12 foot pillow titled Massive Pillow, which rests up against the gallery’s back wall. By standing this pillow upright, Hyde moves away from the landscape format of Large Air Cushion, and into the realm of the figurative. Leaning and bending, and billowing in the mid-section, the piece looks like a human torso, complete with belly and hips. In this instance, instead of using one large vinyl bladder, Hyde fills the giant pillowcase with a number of inflatable pool floats. This makes the form a bit more bumpy and unruly, adding to its figurative reference. Painted in a similar fashion to the Large Air Cushion, Massive Pillow becomes surreal, like one of René Magritte’s floating stone paintings.
A third, small, ottoman-sized soft sculpture Sure (2000) sits on the floor nearby. It’s oddly shaped, and painted in a more gestural manner, which problematizes the artist’s overall message. At first, I found the inclusion of this work to be odd, and even mis-fitting. After some time in the space, I began to see the import of such a work because it created this strange dialogue–not just because the sizes of the pieces were so different, but because this smaller piece maintained a kind of footrest function. I left this very strange, and memorable exhibition with David and Goliath in mind.
James Hyde, "Pillow Talk" Solvent Space, Richmond, VA
