Tag: Lawndale art center

Waiting Room, 2016

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Waiting Room was made as the set for Act I of a three-act play that was never finished. It was shown in 2016 at Lawndale Art Center in Houston in Double Digits: Lawndale’s Artist Studio Program, 10 Years and Counting, a group exhibition celebrating the thirty artists who took part in Lawndale’s Artist Studio Program in its first ten years.

The installation is a reception desk with no receptionist. It has a sign-in book and pen, a bowl of candy, a small succulent, a service bell, and a fishbowl holding a live betta fish named Ennui. Visitors were welcome to sign in, but nobody told them what they were signing in for, and no name was ever called. A charcoal and graphite drawing of numbers hangs above the desk where a clock would be. Every number shows at once, so time looks stopped, or broken, or no longer counting toward anything. (Ennui was not harmed in the making of this work, and lived another five years after the exhibition.)

The work is limbo. Limbo is a waiting room for eternity, where you’re processed but never seen. The installation brings that state down to the scale of an ordinary lobby, the kind of place where everyone has waited without knowing how long it would take or whether anyone was coming.

Act I: Waiting Room (detail), 2016
Charcoal and graphite drawing, betta fish, candy bowl, succulent, sign-in book, bell and pen.
Dimensions variable

Waiting Room detail: framed charcoal and graphite drawing of numbers above a desk with a fishbowl holding a betta fish, candy dish, sign-in book, service bell, succulent, and pen, 2016 by Bradly Brown
Waiting Room installation view: framed charcoal and graphite drawing of numbers above a wooden desk with a fishbowl holding a betta fish, candy dish, sign-in book, service bell, succulent, and pen, 2016 by Bradly Brown
Ennui, a red betta fish, swimming in a round glass fishbowl with white gravel on a wooden desk, part of Waiting Room, 2016 by Bradly Brown
Ennui, the live betta fish in Waiting Room, 2016.

Columns, 2015–2016

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Act III: Columns (1-3), 2015-2016
Artificial turf, black beauty abrasive, plaster, cement, wax, chocolate, bacon fat, Vaseline, clay, resin, foam, glass, ink, debris, found objects, speakers, and record player
Dimensions variable

Act III: Columns (1–3) was made during Brown’s time in the Lawndale Artist Studio Program. It is the final act of a larger narrative that also includes Act I: Waiting Room and the records of Side A. Together, the works form the set for an unfinished three-part play that is still missing its second act.

The work consists of three broken columns, the ruins of a structure that once stood. To make them, Brown built three adjustable housings and, over the course of the residency, filled them with studio waste, found objects, ephemera, trash, and other things he had collected. Between layers of objects he poured phase-changing materials, substances that turn from liquid to solid: two-part plastics, silicone rubber, resin, wax, concrete, plaster, and even chocolate and bacon fat. Rebar ran through each mold, both for reinforcement and to exaggerate the broken condition of the finished pieces. Each column became a kind of time capsule.

When the walls of the molds came off, many of the hidden objects revealed themselves through cracks and broken sections, and Brown excavated parts of the columns to expose even more. He then applied a patchwork of tiles over sections of each column, suggesting how they looked originally, before they began to decay and fall apart.

Conceptually, the work is about the giant structures we trust every day without question: physical ones like buildings and bridges, but also institutions like banks, governments, and commercial giants. We only ever see them from the outside, and what lies beneath that thin shell may be very different. The piece was inspired by a 2016 news story from Taiwan, where an earthquake brought down an apartment building and revealed tin cans packed inside its pillars.

The three columns sit on an island of artificial turf surrounded by black sand. Their soundtrack comes from the records of Side A, another picture of a fragmented culture: bits and pieces joined together in an attempt to make the semblance of a whole. The result scratches, skips, and gets stuck repeating its blemishes until someone moves the needle.

Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown
Columns, 2015–2016 — artwork by artist Bradly Brown