January 29, 2011
5538 Dyer Street, Dallas TX
Hosted by the Free Museum of Dallas, Southern Methodist University
The Workshop was a one-evening event featuring recent projects, sculptures, video installation and live music envisioned as a single installation that proposed a hypothetical space that an artist might occupy. The studio, gallery, urban and recreational landscape converged in and around a raw warehouse space at 5538 Dyer Street in Dallas, where visitors were guided through the installation by the artist performing the role of docent.
In The Workshop, next to a sculpture of the artist, Business on Top Party in Back (Portrait of the Artist), Dallas’ DJ War Horse mixed audio samples of the wildlife documentary series Wild America with dance beats in front of a live video projection fed from a wireless webcam in an adjacent room, The Den. The webcam was mounted on a model train that circulated through a mirrored, mountainous landscape of snack food bags illuminated by a projection of the initial episode of the Wild America series, “Watching Wildlife”.
The Game Room offered guests the opportunity to try their ping pong skills in Sunshine Pong, a custom ping pong table dotted with low-rising islands populated with model fir trees and illuminated on opposing sides by heat lamps.
The Showroom presented recent projects, including Monster Log and Fresh Glade, as well as new sculptures, including Paradise Drive, CAUTION DANGER fire, O . PEN .. and Texas Tans.
At the back of the warehouse space, the V.I.P. Lounge offered a space for conversation around Heads Down, a sculpture whose horizontal mirrored surface, covered with a delicate skin of carbon black oil stick, faintly reflected a mass of Styrofoam that was collected along local lake shores and rearranged on the mirror to resemble a swan with its head below the surface.
Outside, guests explored the Porta Hedge and observed a test drive of the Terrestrial Shrub Rover.
The Workshop was photographed by Teresa Rafidi. Check out her artist website and commercial photography.
