Conduit is many things: a recycling project, a purification ritual, a reclamation, a gift.
One of the communities we aim to reach is the one that the gallery-going public habitually overlooks in Chelsea – the network of auto body shops and gas stations that punctuate the neighborhood. The other community we want to reach is in Santa Ana, El Salvador, where rubber tire inner tubes are recycled into wallets and handbags and sold here to support the community. The installation we propose is a series of purifying acts to transform discarded rubber inner tubes into the material to support the community in Ecuador.
Conduit works like this:
Discarded rubber inner tubes will be collected from the local auto body shops and used tire depots as needed. We will also do outreach to organizations like New York Bike Messenger Association and Bike New York to collect damaged bicycle inner tubes to complement our stock. We will pick up the inner tubes in a weekly shift and via websites and blogs, we will also encourage the general public to drop off inner tubes at CUE.
The inner tubes will then be scrubbed clean to remove motor oil, debris, and odor.
The inner tubes will be cut and patched into a variety of new forms that explore the geometry of the inner tube’s donut-shaped form. Some of the forms will be sections of the torus or donut; others will be composites. This intervention will take place in CUE’s well-lit storefront space. Here visitors to CUE can participate and patch, learn about the recycling work of Uca Ruffatti in El Salvador, and talk with the artists about just about anything including the material, form, and artistic process as ritual purification.
A weekly “Inflation Day” will be scheduled for the duration of the installation. On Inflation Day, the new rubber forms created during the week will be inflated with air or helium. It is anticipated that some of the helium-filled forms will drift, hover or float. The air-filled forms will rest on the floor and gradually, over the course of the installation, accumulate in heaps and masses throughout the remainder of the gallery space.
The space will be painted in carefully calculated gradations of white to gray to completely black the further one ventures into the space. As the inflated inner tubes slowly fill the space, the forms occupying the whiter, lighter front space will be clearly visible and three-dimensional while the closer one get to the darker back section of the gallery, the flatter, less visible the mass of forms will become, gradually translating the space into a large-scale drawing. The intended effect is one of a “vanishing point” that visitors may enter and leave with a sense of ritual purification shared with the transformed refuse.
To fully experience the ever-changing installation, the public will be invited to move about freely inside this “drawing” – looking, touching, bumping into, and “disturbing” the rubber forms in their state of rest – navigating by the sense of sight in the lighter front part and by the sense of touch the further one moves into the space. As the material also possesses both soundproofing qualities, it is also anticipated the material will noticeably quiet the space, creating a sanctuary-like environment.
At the conclusion of Conduit, the inner tubes will be donated to an economic development organization in El Salvador and recycled into handbags and wallets, which are sold here in the States.
All donors and participants will be acknowledged in a running scroll in the workshop portion of the space. The recipients in El Salvador too will be formally acknowledged -- since without recipients, a gift does not exist. Documentation in the form of both photographs and video will be all that remains of Conduit at the end of the installation.
In addition to experiencing art as ritual purification and gift, one of our goals is to render the artists’ process transparent and create a space in which to both demystify and acknowledge the various contributions involved in many contemporary art practices. Further, we aim to deflect attention away from the artist and instead bring attention to the mysterious life of the materials, forms and processes themselves.
This will be a first-time collaboration for A. V. Ryan and Malin Abrahamsson. However, we share complementary preoccupations. A. V. describes her work as a kind of magic realism and casts common industrial objects in unlikely materials to expose an unsuspected inner life in industrial forms. She has done outreach with marginalized communities for a number of years. Malin is a utilitarian at heart and makes ephemeral interventions in the built environment. She has created multiple public art installations.
Conduit is many things: a recycling project, a purification ritual, a reclamation, a gift.
One of the communities we aim to reach is the one that the gallery-going public habitually overlooks in Chelsea – the network of auto body shops and gas stations that punctuate the neighborhood. The other community we want to reach is in Santa Ana, El Salvador, where rubber tire inner tubes are recycled into wallets and handbags and sold here to support the community. The installation we propose is a series of purifying acts to transform discarded rubber inner tubes into the material to support the community in Ecuador.
Conduit works like this:
Discarded rubber inner tubes will be collected from the local auto body shops and used tire depots as needed. We will also do outreach to organizations like New York Bike Messenger Association and Bike New York to collect damaged bicycle inner tubes to complement our stock. We will pick up the inner tubes in a weekly shift and via websites and blogs, we will also encourage the general public to drop off inner tubes at CUE.
The inner tubes will then be scrubbed clean to remove motor oil, debris, and odor.
The inner tubes will be cut and patched into a variety of new forms that explore the geometry of the inner tube’s donut-shaped form. Some of the forms will be sections of the torus or donut; others will be composites. This intervention will take place in CUE’s well-lit storefront space. Here visitors to CUE can participate and patch, learn about the recycling work of Uca Ruffatti in El Salvador, and talk with the artists about just about anything including the material, form, and artistic process as ritual purification.
A weekly “Inflation Day” will be scheduled for the duration of the installation. On Inflation Day, the new rubber forms created during the week will be inflated with air or helium. It is anticipated that some of the helium-filled forms will drift, hover or float. The air-filled forms will rest on the floor and gradually, over the course of the installation, accumulate in heaps and masses throughout the remainder of the gallery space.
The space will be painted in carefully calculated gradations of white to gray to completely black the further one ventures into the space. As the inflated inner tubes slowly fill the space, the forms occupying the whiter, lighter front space will be clearly visible and three-dimensional while the closer one get to the darker back section of the gallery, the flatter, less visible the mass of forms will become, gradually translating the space into a large-scale drawing. The intended effect is one of a “vanishing point” that visitors may enter and leave with a sense of ritual purification shared with the transformed refuse.
To fully experience the ever-changing installation, the public will be invited to move about freely inside this “drawing” – looking, touching, bumping into, and “disturbing” the rubber forms in their state of rest – navigating by the sense of sight in the lighter front part and by the sense of touch the further one moves into the space. As the material also possesses both soundproofing qualities, it is also anticipated the material will noticeably quiet the space, creating a sanctuary-like environment.
At the conclusion of Conduit, the inner tubes will be donated to an economic development organization in El Salvador and recycled into handbags and wallets, which are sold here in the States.
All donors and participants will be acknowledged in a running scroll in the workshop portion of the space. The recipients in El Salvador too will be formally acknowledged -- since without recipients, a gift does not exist. Documentation in the form of both photographs and video will be all that remains of Conduit at the end of the installation.
In addition to experiencing art as ritual purification and gift, one of our goals is to render the artists’ process transparent and create a space in which to both demystify and acknowledge the various contributions involved in many contemporary art practices. Further, we aim to deflect attention away from the artist and instead bring attention to the mysterious life of the materials, forms and processes themselves.
This will be a first-time collaboration for A. V. Ryan and Malin Abrahamsson. However, we share complementary preoccupations. A. V. describes her work as a kind of magic realism and casts common industrial objects in unlikely materials to expose an unsuspected inner life in industrial forms. She has done outreach with marginalized communities for a number of years. Malin is a utilitarian at heart and makes ephemeral interventions in the built environment. She has created multiple public art installations.