Total Running Time, Beall Center for Art + Technology, UC Irvine, September 30, 2023 - January 13, 2024
“Rescue,” a plaster wall relief, and two geometric forms are positioned on the gallery floor.
The five-foot-high white plaster relief 1/8th inch thick sits on the left gallery wall and spills into the alcove, bending around the back left corner. Because it is so thin and the same white as the walls, it visually goes almost unnoticed, but the shadows that the letters cast help define the letters’ edges and contours. The plaster edges are unfinished and rough to the touch. On the left wall, the relief is shaped into three capital letters: R, E, and S. followed by a character of three thick, horizontally stacked lines that span the back corner, continuing to the back wall. Along the back wall, it also includes a capital C, U. It is an anagram of the word “secure.” Altogether, from the R to the U, the relief is 27 feet long. While most of the letters are elegantly simple with thick lines, upon closer inspection, the center of the U holds the image of a screw with a threaded top in the negative space.
Within the center of the room sits two geometric forms that resemble seating, painted with the crisp, smooth gallery white. The forms are the exact dimensions as the horizontal marking situated in the corner of the relief, Rescue, and is an extension of the same work but on the gallery floor. The two forms mirror the character’s two parts but are made three-dimensional: the straight horizontal line from the left side and the line that angles at 45 degrees from the right side. They are exaggerated volumetric forms or like cubes large enough to sit on. Rescue, in its entirety, invites viewers to rest, collapse, lean, or press into their surfaces.