Drywall, Paint, Xenon Projector

Large Print Guide

James Turrell

Catso, Red (1967), 1994 

Drywall, paint, xenon projector

Light is a material with a three-dimensional quality in this cross corner projection, from the first series of light works Turrell made as a student. Turrell has learned to carefully shape (sculpt) light so that it takes on an almost solid form. In Catso, a red cube appears to be suspended in the corner of a room.

Pleiades, 1983 

Drywall, paint, incandescent light 

You approach the gallery through an inclined corridor so dark that you are virtually without sight. At the top of the ramp, you sit in a chair and face blackness. After your eyes adjust, an amorphous sphere of grey-white, or perhaps red, begins to appear, more a presence than an object. As you look harder, the form becomes smaller. You turn away for a moment and back again. It grows and glimmers. But the source of light itself is constant and still.

Pleiades is a Dark Piece where the realm of night vision touches the realm of eyes-closed vision, where the space generated is substantially different than the physical confines and is not dependent upon it, where the seeing that comes from 'out there' merges with the seeing that comes from 'in here,' where the seeing develops over and through dark adaptation but continues beyond it. It is the first piece in a series of works. While it relates to the last piece of the Mendota Stoppages, 1969-70, in that it develops over time, it is definitely a departure in that after the seeing develops, it is no longer static. The thing that gave me the idea to do this was the fact that I needed to work with very low levels of light for the night seeing in the crater piece. The last time that I had really worked in that arena was with the Mendota Stoppages where I had some very dark pieces that took a long time of dark adaptation, sometimes as much as fifteen minutes. When you actually had that seeing, though, the space that was generated was a static space – you saw it and could walk in it, but it didn't change. In this work, what is generated in you and what is actually out there become a little more equal.

Yayoi Kusama

Infinity Dots Mirrored Room, 1996

glass, Formica, lights, decals

Repetitve Vision, 1996

glass, Formica, black light, decals

Yayoi Kusama currently lives in Tokyo. Kusama’s lifetime work has been characterized by paintings, sculpture, installations and happenings*, utilizing dots, netlike patterns and compulsively repeated shapes. She began her career as a painter, had various group and solo exhibitions in Japan, before moving to New York in 1958. As an active member of New York’s avant-garde, she staged numerous, well-publicized happenings to which she invited the public and the press. At these happenings, she painted dots on herself, artists, friends and the public.

Yayoi Kusama’s installation “Infinity Dots Mirrored Room” is entered through two black painted doors. Upon entering the rooms as the doors are closed the viewer is in a dark room with mirrored walls on all four sides and ceiling. The ceiling contains recessed black light. The floor is white with small, medium, and large multi-colored dots placed sporadically throughout. The mirrored walls and ceiling reflect the dots, floor, recessed lighting and the viewer itself extending the allusion of an infinite reflection.

Yayoi Kusama’s installation “Repetitive Vision,” is entered through two mirrored doors from Kusama’s installation “Infinity Dots Mirrored Room.” The doors open into a 10-foot long hallway with black walls, floor and ceiling. There is an open doorway at the end of the hall that reveals a brightly lit room with mirrored walls and ceiling. The floor is white with small, medium, and large neon orange circles. Placed in the room are three, nude female mannequins spray-painted with black wigs all spray painted white. Neon orange dots are placed sporadically on the bodies. Each mannequin is standing centrally placed in the room. Five white lights are recessed in the ceiling in a checkerboard pattern of the nine large mirrored tiles that make up the ceiling.

*Happenings- public art events involving the participation of several people in various activities such as performance, poetry, music and other art forms.

Winifred Lutz

Garden, 1993

The three-quarters of an acre space adjacent to 500 Sampsonia Way is a living work of art. Constructed of natural and manmade elements that reveal the area’s layered natural and architectural history, this site-specific installation allows viewer to experience the work’s unique features from multiple levels and vantage points. By the time Philadelphia-based environmental artist Winifred Lutz began work on this permanent installation in 1993, she had already studied the site for five years. She used information she uncovered—both historical and physical—to design a garden that responds to and incorporates the history and attributes of the site, including the foundation of a building that had burned down years ago. In the late 1800’s, Italian immigrants settled in the neighborhood surrounding the Mattress Factory; many worked in agricultural jobs, including food production and cooking, and as grocery store operators and vegetable hucksters. The history of the Mattress Factory and Lutz’s Garden reflects this cultural context.

As a result of studying the site over several years, she planned a work that responded to and incorporated the particular natural and built attributes of the site. She established public and private spaces with various physical elements: stones individually selected from a western Pennsylvania quarry, a tall grass enclosure surrounding a single chair, indigenous wild flowers, a wood pergola, a concrete trough filled with flowing water and an amphitheater built from the remains of the steward Paper Factory burnt down in 1963. To focus the viewer’s vision, she has designed a series of apertures framing specific vistas. Her goal is to create a sanctuary within an urban environment without isolating it form the community.

Describing the installation, she says, “The garden is designed to incorporate the vestiges of the burnt factory, to provide a quite refuge in the tradition of old European walled gardens, to retain site-memory, and to provide visual interest to passersby. Native plants have been selected for their low maintenance and hardiness in harsh conditions, but also to provide bird habitat.”

Bill Woodrow

Ship of Fools: Discovery of Time, 1986

metal cabinets, existing kitchen, wood, paint

The artist left the turn-of-the-century kitchen in its worn state with peeling paint, neglected wood and antiquated fixtures. He added forms, cut from old metal cabinets.

You open the door into a room frozen in time, to see a disaster. The floor has been raised to show the effects of a mounting flood.

From a tap made of an overturned gas mantle heater, liquid gold has flowed, filling the kitchen, and has petrified. A metronome, fashioned from part of a cabinet to which it still clings, stands as a symbol of time. Emerging from the pantry is the front half of a large water buffalo with a ship’s model caught in its horns.

A remnant from the cabinet, out of which the horns were cut sticks up through the gleaming surface like the fin of a shark. An unshaded bulb casts harsh light over all this.

A Collaboration

Handrail, 1993

aluminum, water, pump

The handrail on either side of the staircase contains an aluminum trough with a narrow stream of water running from the third to the second floor.

The handrail is the only remaining aspect of a larger installation produced by this group of artists. A Collaboration, 1993, included, among other things, a periscope (on street level) that provided a constant view of a waterfall, a resin door (in a gallery on the second floor) that led not to another room, but rather allowed light to enter the gallery. In yet another space within the building, a steel railing focused viewers’ attention on a horizon line set into the wall, which emanated the smell of freshly cut grass. The sounds of a waterfall filled another interior space, while blinds covering windows displayed actual photographic images of the area outside of the building and scenes that might be viewed from the window itself.

Artists: Monica M. Bock Mary Carlisle Cathy Lynn Gasser Melissa Goldstein Sandrine Sheon Catherine Smith

Sarah Oppenheimer

610-3356, 2008

aircraft grade plywood, framing structure, view into neighboring yard across street

4th Floor

Sarah Oppenheimer opens apertures in existing architecture, modifying the recognizable modular units (such as rooms) that make up our standardized built world. Interested in the way that people navigate their environments through both familiar bodily experience and with the aid of navigational tools, like maps, Oppenheimer’s works alter the visitor’s experience and perception in the gallery space.

For this installation, Oppenheimer created an opening in the floor of a small gallery on the fourth floor. This is the first time in the museum’s 35-year history that an artist has reconfigured the building structure in this way.

This aperture, or “wormhole,” as Oppenheimer refers to the type of hole she created, offers a new line of sight within the exhibition space and functions as both a hole and a screen, directing the viewer’s gaze down and out the third floor window. The hole creates a disorienting sense of an impossible proximity between the fourth floor and the external world outside.

The space of display—the museum gallery—is transformed from a container for specific objects into a lensed view of the outside world. The fourth floor gallery floor and the third floor window are part of the work. The shaped hole in the interior floor extends through the armature, framing a vista out the side of the building. In this way, Oppenheimer has created a zone for pictorial reflection. The view of the outside world is framed and is accepted as the work.

Oppenheimer alters our vision, alters our expectations. Like a film director she directs our gaze and moves it through her framing device. While everyone will have a different view through the hole, depending on their position in the gallery space and depending on their height, the viewer follows the sight line to see the view into a neighboring yard across the street.

The title of the work, 610-3556, is derived by reference to a typology or classification system created by the artist that describes, in graphic form, how the hole is perceptually perceived and the materials used to create it.

Dara Meyers-Kingsley

Independent Curator

Rolf Julius

Red, 1996

Two speakers, suspended from the ten-foot ceiling by thin wire, hang just inches from the ground. They are coated with a brilliant, powdery, orange-red pigment that vibrates with the pulsing sound emanating from the speakers.

Music for a Garden, 1997

Julius created this work as a site-specific sound piece that enhances the visitor’s experience of a space in the Mattress Factory Garden, by Winifred Lutz. A mix of natural and electronic sounds is broadcasted from speakers, which are placed high on the museum’s wall facing the Garden. The speakers are angled in such a way that the visitor hears sounds at different places. The sounds’ pitches and volumes are modulated to sit at the edge of conscious awareness, subtly affecting one’s experience of the site.

“[In Julius’s work] three senses are involved: hearing, seeing, and touching...Although he shows us how closely the senses of hearing, seeing, and touching are related to each other; he does not follow the kinesthetic theories which state that each sound is associated with a particular colour. Julius’s music does not work like that. For him, a sound is a sound and colour is colour. However, when the senses ‘accidentally’ work beautifully together, the work is a complete success. Instead of saying ‘accidentally,’ Julius would probably prefer to say that the senses ‘inevitably’ work together.”

— Shi Nakagawa, Musicologist and close friend of Rolf Julius

Ash, 1991

terra cotta flower pots, speakers, ash, recorded sound

At first, you might think “Ash” is just two red clay flower pots filled with dirt. But as you watch and listen you begin to notice something else.

The artist, Julius, has recorded ordinary sounds – like birds, radiators or crickets – and patched them together into a collage of sound. This “music” plays from speakers inside the flower pots. They are covered with an orangey ash (from German coal-burning fireplaces) that seems to be dancing. It is as though the ash is making the sound “visible.” It moves differently with every sound.

Julius’ medium, the material he used to make this installation, is sound. He uses his ears and a tape recorder to collect different sounds and make them into something else by combining them with objects he chooses just as carefully.

William Anastasi

UNTITLED (Calisthenic Series), Wall drawing after DaVinci’s Vitruvius Man, October 4, 1997, 16:02-16:48

graphite on wall

This work is located in the second room of Alan Wexler’s “Bed Sitting Room for an Artist in Residence,” on the wall between the room’s old fireplace and the window. Artist William Anastasi picked up a stone from the sidewalk outside, and instead of drawing on the wall, he rubbed and scratched at the surface until some of the paint – and even some of the wall itself – came off. Anastasi calls this kind of drawing a “wall removal.” To Anastasi, the process of creating a drawing is as important as the end result.

Anastasi has been creating timed drawings while blindfolded for close to forty years. The radius of this circular wall drawing is equal to the artist’s reach and refers to the relationship of the human body to geometry, illustrated by Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvius man, whose height and arm span define the measure of a circle and a square.

When Anastasi took art classes at school, he learned to draw the conventional way-with his eyes open, looking at the paper. He wondered what his drawings would look like if he didn’t use his eyes, so he began to experiment. Anastasi discovered that he likes drawing this way and even likes the drawings themselves better than when he looks at what he is doing. Sometimes Anastasi ties a piece of cloth over his eyes like a blindfold and takes a pencil in each hand. He then draws for a specific length of time, and refers to these works as “timed blind drawings,” like those he created at the Mattress Factory. For one drawing, called “April 15, 1989, 32 minutes, 4B,” Anastasi held a 4B pencil in each hand. With his eyes covered, he moved from one end of the room to the other for exactly 32 minutes, marking the wall in big, sweeping movements as far as his arms could reach.

Allan Wexler

Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence, 1988

drywall, wood, paint, carpet

“The Mattress Factory acquired a rundown row house near its original building and commissioned me to design a living space for its Artist-in-Residence program. The space consisted of two rooms that might need to function in a variety of ways: for one occupant who wants a sitting area in one room and a single bed in the other, for a couple who want a sitting area in one room and a double bed in the other room, for two people who each want privacy with a single bed and/or a sofa in each room, and for a person who wants an empty room for working and a bedroom.”

Two rooms are connected by a flexible, functional installation where visiting artists live while they work on their own installations in other spaces. The space is delineated by color – gray carpet, pale blue on walls, doors, and into the hall. The opening in the wall between the two rooms through which everything shared can pass – light bulbs, beds, and arm rests – is painted bright red. The two single beds roll through the wall for sleeping or sitting. They can be positioned to make sofas, a king-sized bed, or separate beds in each room. Back cushions reverse to headboards.

“I superimposed a 13’ 8” x 19’ x 8’ volume into the middle of the two-room space, the center wall dividing this new ‘room’ in half. Everything within this volume was treated as new construction, with blue walls and gray carpet. The areas outside of this ‘room’ were left as is and completely covered with white paint. The wall dividing my ‘room’ has a series of openings through which the furniture components can partially or fully pass through: two mattresses roll through on wheels, two light bulbs rotate through the wall and can be used in either space, the sofa back (cushion)/ night table swivels around and locks into place when needed to complete a bed or sofa, the sofa arms slide through to complete the sofa.