Some artists are happy enough just having their work shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, but 37-year-old Corin Hewitt is actually moving in.
For three months starting Friday, visitors will be able to observe him working every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the small gallery just off the Whitney’s lobby. There he has created his own universe, an environment that is part kitchen, part office, part garage and part garden.
In a blend of photography and performance and installation art, Mr. Hewitt will construct objects, compose still lifes and take photographs of his creations. As the project, called “Seed Stage,” unfolds, each of the photographs will be framed and hung on the gallery walls surrounding the environment.
Strewn around the space is everything from a hot plate, freezer and microwave oven to a paper shredder, pressure cooker, camera and water-filtration system. There is a custom-built worm composting system, a crawl space, trapdoors and a root cellar filled with vegetables that he grew this year in Vermont, where he spends his summers.
“We’re always looking for interesting ways of enlivening our lobby,” said Tina Kukielski, a senior curatorial assistant at the Whitney who organized the project.
Installing the environment was a 10-day undertaking. Mr. Hewitt described the space as something “between a studio and a still life in motion.”
He enjoys fashioning objects from unusual materials. He weaves baskets from pasta, for example, and paints spinach red before torching it and then photographing it.
Ms. Kukielski predicts that by the time Mr. Hewitt wraps up his project on Jan. 4, about 70 of his photographs will be hanging on the walls. “It’s an examination of the cycles of transformation and transience,” she said of the project.
Corin Hewitt: Seed Stage
on view October 3, 2008 - January 4, 2009
http://whitney.org/www/exhibition/hewitt.jsp
CORIN HEWITT
Born 1971 Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Education 1996 Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Karlsruhe, Germany 1993 B.A., Oberlin College, OH
It's really a new way of presenting artist work, including the process. The museum set up a studio in the lobby, and the audience can peer at the artist while he is doing his work. I think that must satisfy some curiosities about how artist proceeds their job.
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