Tiny art that’s big in concept

Gestures

Through October 8, 2005

The Mattress Factory

500 Sampsonia Way

(412) 231-3169

… Gestures

Through October 8, 2005

The Mattress Factory

500 Sampsonia Way

(412) 231-3169

Free with Pitt ID

Observing works of art downtown, it’s clear that artists’ views of Pittsburgh are changing. With giant symbols of industry like the fenced-in rubble in the Cultural District and the steel-pride monoliths on Bigelow Boulevard overlooking the Allegheny, Pittsburgh has always tied its industry to its art. But now more and more members of the community are creating small, emotional works that speak about the city in a far less obvious way: Pittsburgh’s art as we’ve known it is changing.

“Gestures” at the Mattress Factory calls to mind not smoke stacks and smelting, but instead scenes like a picnic in Schenley Park. Eleven of Pittsburgh’s residents created “small, site-specific works” for the museum’s 1414 Monterey Annex. The featured “Gestures” are far from the overloaded nature of traditional installation art. The gallery’s Mexican War street house, converted to lend additional exhibition space, retains its “house feeling,” thereby maintaining an intimacy between installation artists and their space.

Upon entering the museum doors, you’ll be greeted immediately by definitive local art. Jay Dantry, who has owned Jay’s Bookstall in Oakland for more than 50 years, greets museum goers with his own set of doors – 13 of them to be precise, each of the same color as his shop’s own – filled with his favorite photos taken among his stacks. These familiar sights are likely to summon vivid memories in any student who has passed his storefront on Fifth Avenue. And that is exactly what Jay proposes to do: “The [photos] in black and white are all memories,” Dantry says.

“Book People,” the first art piece he has ever created, focuses on people he knew long ago, people who have moved on. Some of these people are famous, some are well known, but most are just customers who have passed through his doors – and they’re all depicted in copious Polaroids collected since the 1960s.

Suddenly, one’s ears perk to a fitful howling rising from the floorboards. Anyone familiar enough with television – from the casual adventurer to the horror-film nut – will feel compelled to descend the stairs into the actual basement of the house, through “Wizard of Oz”-style storm doors. It almost sounds like a tornado in here: Shut the door and hold onto your museum buddy in the dark.

George Davis’ “Scary Forest” is a wild and imaginative video installation of forest images and howling voices, spooky like a nighttime crawl through a Western Pennsylvania forest. A little “Blair Witch” and a little “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” “Scary Forest” evokes just as many reactions as the average installation does, but with a personal touch of Davis’ own childhood memories.

Upstairs, the gallery gets a little disheveled, as some permanent exhibits lend space to these scattered bits of localism.

For her installation, Jill Larson set up a table littered with nails and released some helium-filled balloons – not the thick, durable type but those paper-thin, 100-for-a-dollar balloons. If you can’t predict the result of this work, ask a physics major. “Chance” reveals the tension behind a strained situation as the joyful balloons slowly deflate, burst and become carcasses of rubber. Though most have popped since installation, it’s worth the rare opportunity to catch another one meeting its doom.

Still other works deal with nature, politics, race, sexuality, Easter bunnies, the obscene and the obscure. All are interesting to see and hear, but few succeed in making much of an emotional impression.

“Gestures” may not be the most astounding exhibit, but its small works are based upon large concepts: What is an artist? Who creates art? Where can art be displayed?

When Dantry was called in the Tuesday before the show for an “art emergency,” he was told that his photos had completely covered the doors already purchased – three more would be needed. “Find three more and paint them green,” he said, not seeing the true “emergency” in this.

And that is the real beauty of this exhibit: its simple gestures.