October 24, 2007

Phoebe Washburn



Just out of your lecture and wanted to think about what you are saying still. You keep bringing up failing and mistakes. Mentioning process and asinine attempts and conclusions. Someone asked about your grass and if you felt as if your failure motif was disheartening after you had built an entire factory, including assembly lines, flood lamps, computating gizmos, and even 3 paid gardeners. And still to that effect the grass died.

What wasn't mentioned was the concept of failure. What does it mean to fail. Looking at consumerism and your grass as a commodity then doesn't that mean it has a shelf life like any other organic product. How is the time line of your product gauged? Is it by the standards of the consumers use of it? No. Is it by it's longevity to thrive in an unsuitable environment? No. Is it based off of the duration of your exhibit? Yes.

All products have a proposed life measured by external factors. A comparison of shoes to chewing gum illustrates this. However it's the expectations that are placed on these products that could be used to determine your failure motif. Because to say that anything is succeeding is a lie. Everything, is in fact, in some state of degenerative state and your work is fundamentally nothing more than an aesthetically driven, imagery repetitive, temporary rejuvination followed by entropy.

By your standards, within the context of a gallery your work has trouble. It speaks a different language in there. It's as if you are devoid of gravity, perhaps in a vaccuum-tube. But it is succeeding also. Isn't it? Well, it looks beautifully sculptural and what is sculpture but something you bump into when you're stepping back to look at art.

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