Martha Friedman: Pore

Locust Projects presents Pore, an exhibition of new work by Brooklyn-based artist Martha Friedman, whose artistic practice is always highly intelligent, yet never without a sense of the surreal and absurd. Using over one thousand pounds of rubber, Friedman will produce four large-scale rubber “pours” on-site at Locust Projects, which will be rigged to hang from the ceiling and cascade onto the floor. The “pours” are connected to four wearable sculptures, custom-made for dancer and choreographer Silas Riener, Friedman’s collaborator and muse. Each semi-translucent colored sheet of rubber represents one of the four humors, theory of which formed the foundation of Western medicine, up until the nineteenth century. This marks the first time that Friedman has created an exhibition where the space in which she is exhibiting is an integral part of her sculptures, and it is also the first time that she has made performance a significant part of the work. Riener will activate the costumes with movements that conjure the meaning of each humor through an evocative series of actions that he has choreographed with Friedman. Riener will perform during the exhibition’s opening weekend in November, and again during the week of Art Basel in Miami Beach in December.

Pore also includes a series of metal and rubber sculptures, including one that consists of dissected metal tubes with sharp points at its extremities, cross-sectioned, which oozes rubber appendages. Another takes a Bauhaus-era necklace, constructed from a repurposed drain cover and paper clips, and telescopes its dimensions to a monumental scale.