When conceptual art speaks

“Messages and Communications”

Dennis Marsico, Jonathan Callan, Diane Samuels, others… “Messages and Communications”

Dennis Marsico, Jonathan Callan, Diane Samuels, others

Mattress Factory

500 Sampsonia Way

The North Side, Pittsburgh

(412) 231-3169

The Mattress Factory’s latest exhibit pulls together six artists with vast backgrounds and interests and places them within the backdrop of the show’s title, “Messages and Communications.” The artists, five American and one British, use diverse means to explore and suggest how people communicate.

The show, which opened at the beginning of this month, will run in the Mattress Factory’s main gallery until April 2, 2006. The artists featured are Emil Lukas, Dennis Marsico, Edie Tsong, Russell Crotty, Pittsburgh native Diane Samuels and Jonathan Callan of Britain.

Emil Lukas’ “27 Correspondents” installation is a long room in which 27 wooden and metal poles are wedged vertically between the floor and ceiling. Pressed against either end are objects that seem to have some correlation to each other, such as two books at either end or a plaster cast of a volleyball pressed against the floor and a picture of a girl’s volleyball team pushed on the ceiling.

One of the more interesting pieces is Jonathan Callan’s “For Stuart Callan.” At first glance, one is taken aback by the enormous structure that looks like a colorful cross-section of a tree trunk resting on a wall and stretching from floor to ceiling – but a closer look reveals that the sculpture was made of a hundreds of paperback books.

Diane Samuels, who lives on Sampsonia Way in the North Side – the same street on which the Mattress Factory is located – photographed the entire alley from an aerial perspective and assembled the pictures together with words written on top of the piece. These words are quotes she has heard from the neighbors and passersby on the street. While the concept of the relationship between a street and the communication that takes place on it creates a thoughtful dynamic, the installation wasn’t visually enthralling.

Coming out of the third floor elevator, Edie Tsong’s life-sized sculpture of herself catches one’s periphery in “Endless Self-Portrait/Portrait of an Audience.” The self-sculpture of Tsong, standing in the middle of an empty room gazing out of a window, is a reflection of when she was eight months pregnant. Tsong considers this piece to be representative of how the outside world helps form our identity; being pregnant and changing physically every day emphasized for her how identity changes via the perceptions of others.

Alongside this piece, Tsong has a second exhibit, titled “A Little Patch of Earth.” This is a video projection of her expectant stomach; the projection used chiaroscuro lighting to make it resemble a landscape. The video captured the kicks and other movements of the baby, emphasizing how the baby made its presence known.

“The video makes a parallel between exploring the most deeply personal and the universal, and these two distant spheres are one and the same,” Tsong explained in the visitor’s guide.

Dennis Marsico’s “Passion or Politics” is probably the most thought-provoking and visually compelling exhibit in the show. The outer room feels like a lobby to an office where Marsico displays several politically themed posters and has two books encased in glass. The books are handmade bindings by Marsico with photographs of everyday people waking up to political leaders on televisions in the background, suggesting the presence of politics in everyday life.

Even more intriguing is the purple, back-lit door with the words “Rare Book Room.” It leads to a circular room with a panorama of a library, but the shelves are filled on one side and barren on the other. There is also a desk in which viewers can explore more of Marsico’s books, which feature an array of styles from pictures that are written over in Braille to abstract photo collages.

In the basement is “Nightfall” by Russell Crotty. The exhibit is made up of seven painted fiberglass spheres suspended from the ceiling, which are a representation of cosmic surveillance made by Crotty in his observatory.

Although many of the installations are engaging, it sometimes feels like the artist has to stretch the meaning of his or her art to make in fit the theme of “Messages and Communications.”

As usual, the Mattress Factory brings us artists from around the world who focus on unusual, gripping concepts. But it’s best to keep a wide focus when approaching the exhibition – rather than focusing on the broad concept of “Messages and Communications,” hone in on the meaning emanating from each individual piece.