No Frills

2016

Light Industry, 2016 Echo Art Fair, Buffalo, NY. Curated by Jordan Geiger.

Site-specific Installation

No Frills is a site-specific installation in Buffalo, New York, located in a former General Motors factory designed by the architect Albert Kahn. The project explores the evolution of imitation stone cladding systems at the turn of the twentieth-century. A 13-foot, inhabitable terracotta column interrupts the existing grid of the assembly floor as an act of experimental re-construction. The piece was developed in collaboration with Boston Valley Terra Cotta—a Buffalo-based manufacturer of architectural ceramics—and provided a test case for introducing digital workflows into analog ceramic production processes. The installation pays homage to origin myths of the industrial monument in modernist architecture, while serving as a material investigation into the production history of mass-produced ornaments.

Material Consultants: Boston Valley Terra Cotta

Fabrication: Custom Laser, Spielman Fabrication

Photography: Biff Henrich