Synapses, serenity and ships comprise exhibit

“Factory Installed”

Various Artists

Mattress Factory

North Side

Through January 28,… “Factory Installed”

Various Artists

Mattress Factory

North Side

Through January 28, 2007

412-231-3169

With another series of “Factory Installed,” the Mattress Factory continues its commitment to support artists from around the globe in producing site-specific installations while solidifying its status as a staple in the city’s cultural life.

Rather than attempting to harness a random grouping of artists into a specific theme, the Mattress Factory often encourages the artists brought in to react solely to the space in which they will be working and settling on whatever ideas come to them.

The result is a collection of varied artworks that’s forming a series of exhibitions called “Factory Installed.”

This exhibition, which opened last month, features work from Dan Steinhilber, Deborah Ashhiem, Nick Cave and a collaborative piece between Jesse Bercowewtz and Matt Bua.

Steinhilber is an American installation artist who uses everyday materials in works that are site-specific — they are created directly in response to the space they occupy.

For his untitled exhibit on the fourth floor of the museum, he uses a giant, blue plastic tarp, garage door openers and leaf blowers. The piece is cyclical, starting with the tarp sprawled out across the floor.

Then the leaf blowers click on, and, with help from the garage door openers rigged as pulleys to lift it up, the tarp begins the process of filling up with air. In slow, wave-like movements, the tarp opens fully, pressed up against the sidewalls and ceiling.

Despite the noisiness of the leaf blowers and garage doors, or maybe with its aid, the piece manages to give off an uneasy or awkward tranquility as the tarp flaps up and down.

Sharing the fourth floor are American artists Jesse Bercowewtz and Matt Bua with their piece “Ships, Chips and the Stack of Documents” — an avant-garde exploration of The Philadelphia Experiment.

The Philadelphia Experiment was an incident in which a naval ship, the U.S.S. Eldridge, was made invisible and transported from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Va.

According to Alexandra Bruce, author of “The Philadelphia Experiment Murder,” the ship disappeared both from radar and plain sight.

“When the Eldridge finally reappeared in Philadelphia, several men were dead and some were found melded into the steel of the ship,” Bruce claims in her book.

With the front end of a cruiser ship sticking out the fourth floor window of Mattress Factory’s main building, the pair’s piece attracts attention straightaway.

The inside is something akin a fun house; we wait for something to pop out as we walk through the exhibit.

At one end of the room is a demented recliner that looks like a converted barber’s chair — a microwave provides the head and has a spinning disco ball inside. This is surrounded by flashing colored lights and several video screens playing talk shows and bubble-head interviews about the conspiracy. All told, it’s an unnerving experience.

On the opposite end of the room lies a couch, another television and books by the likes of Aleister Crowley, Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla. It was a bit confusing whether this solely served as a part of the exhibit or if it was meant to be a library where viewers should sit and educate themselves about the conspiracy.

The third floor features “On Memory” by Deborah Ashhiem, which is one of the more visually stimulating and interesting pieces in the exhibition.

“On Memory” starts out with a jumbled mapping of pictures from Ashhiem’s past along with short blurbs about what the pictures represent to her. These are stringed along with what resembles nerve connections across the wall.

In the next room are “networks” of lighted plastic tubing with centers filled with video monitors. The effect replicates a collection of nerves or synapses hanging from the ceiling. Each of the video monitors plays vintage film clips of children partaking in various activities like playing in the yard or with their parents.

The exhibit makes for a thought-provoking piece that encourages one to think about the place of memory in our lives. Ashhiem also manages to make for an aesthetically accomplished showing.

Nick Cave, one who has visited Mattress Factory before, found it an interesting situation to be assigned the basement.

“Once I realized that I was in the basement, it literally changed everything I was thinking about doing,” Cave said. “I think the basement really forced me to deal with my sense as a black male.”

Cave’s piece, “A Quarter Til Ten,” is a lurid and fascinating reflection of this idea. Featuring a vast array of segments, the exhibit is something of a collage that appears to represent a manifestation of a stream of consciousness.

On the floor is a pattern of mud-colored plates, followed by an assortment of found objects placed into compartments, and objects hanging from the walls offset the scene.

The lucid feel of Cave’s work creates a sentiment that can’t be pinned down to any one meaning, but the obscure feeling it conveys is palpable.

Together the works provide an interesting spectrum of art that not only lives up to the Mattress Factory’s tradition, but helps to develop it further.