Last night I attended an “adult entertainment” at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We were invited to roam the galleries showing examples of mods and hacks in which the user (who could be a practicing artist or simply a consumer) modifies an existing item into something else. We also got to do our own mods, such as decorating our shoes with a rich assortment of buttons, dayglo puffs and various appliqués.
Cool for me were a small table made on the beach by melting pewter then pouring it into a pattern hand-dug in the sand; we saw the table and also a stop-action movie of the artist creating it. Also, a room full of consumer products in which the consumer mods it in some way after purchasing: a dress that comes with a set of Sharpies for decorating; a shaggy lamp, made of discarded packing tendrils, that can be coiffed to your preference; and the “Fragile” salt and pepper shakers shown here that have to be snapped apart to be used. Also cool: mods and hacks by San Quentin prisoners to turn a Bic pen, a toothbrush and a tightly rolled up sheet of paper into a shiv.
Less cool was a lot of stuff that looked awkward and, to the extent it actually means to be used (however ironically) impractical and uncomfortable. I’m especially thinking of an exhibit of 100 chairs made in 100 days of cast off materials, which looks to me like 100 days of a very bad backache.
By the end of the night I was hungry for some Martin Puryear… the artist who makes definitely impractical things out of a reverential processing of everyday construction materials such as wire, tar and wood. Let him make a chair, and I’ll sit in it.
The YBCA show runs through October 3.