Alien Vernacular: storefront display sale Jenny Polak, In Practice Proposal for Sculpture Center, 2008
For this project I will to go round stores in different NY neighbourhoods, to collect (document by drawing and photographing) their designs for exterior produce-stacking structures like those shown here from Chinatown. As with those shown, I will photograph, analyze, and draw the structures, and reconstruct them.
I will ‘curate’ these, making finished and construction drawings of the 6 or 8 best, crediting their original designer/builders and reproducing them in exterior grade materials (plywood mainly) for display in Sculpture Center’s yard.
I would like them to be used for displaying, buying/selling wares on the weekends, inviting the original designers to bring goods, or artists to bring portable art objects for sale, or both in garage sale mode. These real exchanges will perhaps bring an interesting mixed-up audience into that pure, beautiful space. The structures could be moved out onto the street at times.
The vehicles of the exchange will themselves be ‘on the market’ as art, offered in the form of the edition of working drawings with instructions to build. They will be named for the specific store or street they were found on. I think these structures are beautiful and pragmatic and their adaptive iterations, often reminiscent of small street-side bleachers, are like migrant survival systems.
Alien Vernacular: storefront display sale Jenny Polak, In Practice Proposal for Sculpture Center, 2008
For this project I will to go round stores in different NY neighbourhoods, to collect (document by drawing and photographing) their designs for exterior produce-stacking structures like those shown here from Chinatown. As with those shown, I will photograph, analyze, and draw the structures, and reconstruct them.
I will ‘curate’ these, making finished and construction drawings of the 6 or 8 best, crediting their original designer/builders and reproducing them in exterior grade materials (plywood mainly) for display in Sculpture Center’s yard.
I would like them to be used for displaying, buying/selling wares on the weekends, inviting the original designers to bring goods, or artists to bring portable art objects for sale, or both in garage sale mode. These real exchanges will perhaps bring an interesting mixed-up audience into that pure, beautiful space. The structures could be moved out onto the street at times.
The vehicles of the exchange will themselves be ‘on the market’ as art, offered in the form of the edition of working drawings with instructions to build. They will be named for the specific store or street they were found on. I think these structures are beautiful and pragmatic and their adaptive iterations, often reminiscent of small street-side bleachers, are like migrant survival systems.