IF YOU THROW AN EGG AT A MOUSETRAP IT BREAKS BUT STILL ESCAPES [ ITERATION II]
2024
IF YOU THROW AN EGG AT A MOUSE TRAP IT BREAKS BUT STILL ESCAPES [ITERATION II] is a piece I developed with Keke Zhang for two performers exploring what it means to escape. Using the same pieces of wall that I extracted from my old studio from IF YOU THROW AN EGG AT A MOUSE TRAP IT BREAKS BUT STILL ESCAPES [ITERATION I], material remains are propped up using metal studs to create a makeshift wall. Performers interact with this wall-like object, which transforms into various forms: from a mask, to a window, a ping pong net and vehicle. Through movement performers play and explore formal permutations as methods of liberation. For the hole that can be vacant or violent, it also can become an opening or a doorway, an imaginative landscape, or reclamation.
Performed at SK Gallery in New York City.
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If You Throw An Egg At A Mouse Trap [ITERATION II] A TRAILER
(see below for full performance)
If You Throw An Egg At A Mouse Trap (Ring for Artist Statement) in Two Parts [ITERATION I]
2023
PART 1
a video reenactment of a performance from Columbia University School of the Arts Open studios event.
Whenever a visitor rings a call bell, the I begin this 2:30 performance, traveling through the space of the studio activating sculptural objects, props, and costumes. Performed 30 times over the span of approximately three hours, the space of the artist’s studio accumulates various remnants, marks, and smells from the actions performed.
PART 2
After the performance I cleared the remains that gathered on the floor beneath. A gelatinous puddle resting on top of the many years of gray floor paint accumulated over generations of studio occupancy. The combined yellow and white blended into one smashed pile, growing with smell. Not yet the stink of rot, but a fresh, raw, bodily, smell.
Beneath the floors and walls of this building lie the substructure of what used to be a nuclear testing facility of the Manhattan Project - then turned dairy pasteurizing plant, turned ivy league art studio. Painted white, covered gray, I consider the term “neutral space”. Costumed in the gray Columbia sweatshirt once worn by my father during his circuit at Columbia’s dental school, I tore into the surface of the wall with tools powered by the electricity of the same. What is revealed is not sheetrock, but plywood - a facing or mask covering the brick structural wall beneath it.I now live with what art critics call a tempura painting, and it’s companion shadow hole in my studio.
A sterile and hollow space left exposed. Around it bits of shell mixed with sand and other studio detritus blanketing the floor, and unwashed, splashed egg on opposing walls. Yellow yolk peeling away white paint as it dries.
