Opening July 24, Left Cube Gallery presents "Staples," an exhibition of artists who use an under-recognized fastener.
Kim Clockauer, Eric Treacher, Maureen Lane, Ben Tye Nollins, and Randy Marsteller all have worked with staples as both an adornment and a sculptural unit. This exhibition plays on multiple meanings of the word: a reflection of the office culture that is a "day job" reality for many artists (punning on the name of the pervasive office supplies franchise), a sense that minimalist art has become a new "staple" unconnected to the biological world, and the plain factual signifier of a small metal object that can be gathered, pounded, and folded into a new art.
Clockauer uses staples to affix small fabric swatches to the wall, pulling them this way and that in a kind of indecisive determination of form. Treacher looks back to the punk era of the '70s for ritual fashion cues, "scarifying" his body with staples punched into earlobes and elbows, then photo-documenting the results. Lane's deceptively seductive arrangements of ceramic kitchenware feature clusters of staples dissolving in sulfuric acid, creating strange crystalline patterns. Video artist Tye Nollins places thousands of staples on flatbed scanners as the raw material for his generative, morphing abstractions. Lastly, Marsteller presents meticulous photoreal paintings of staple packs and guns, treating them as enduring but ultimately empty Pop icons.
The exhibition opens 7 pm with a performance by Treacher. Left Cube is located at 617 W. 28th Street, NY.