223-225 West 10th Street – New York, New York
March 10, 2014 – June 06, 2014
Patrick Bérubé is a Montreal-based artist whose work combines installation and sculpture in a humorous, direct, and ironic manner. Eager Vanity is composed of a taxidermy bird peeking out of a ventilation system, with a gun, crown, skull, and candlestick covered in birdseed below it. The juxtaposition evokes the dichotomy of desire and deprivation, as it suggests an explicit desire on the bird’s behalf, while also rendering this desire impossible, futile. Bérubé’s installation also references art history and the notion of a vanitas painting, which typically features a skull within a still life painting as a meditation on the transient nature of earthly goods and pursuits. Here, Bérubé creates a real-life, sculptural vanitas as installation. Eager Vanity activates the West 10th Window and the viewer in turn, with feelings of desire, irony, humor, frustration, and deprivation.
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The West 10th Street Window is curated by Natalie Diaz and Jennie Lamensdorf and is sponsored by the Time Equities Inc. (TEI) Art-in-Buildings Program. TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through the Art-in-Buildings Program, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.
