125 Maiden Lane – New York, New York
November 18, 2005 – January 28, 2006
Tall buildings can look joyless and generic from the outside and at the same time elicit a sense of mystery and excitement about what is occurring inside. In Matthew Geller’s exhibition, Almost. Again. Almost. One more time., his small-scale cement buildings engage these notions of concealment, suspense and revelation. He strips the building’s exterior down to the bare essentials—walls, a roof, a door, and a window. It’s in these windows that we see a magnified fragment of something that might go awry—a water leak, an oil reservoir, a nervous pigeon, a trip delayed, men and machines in the night. In addition to cement, Geller uses materials essential to any building’s life: water, oil, wire, pumps, electricity and electronics—in this case tiny video screens.
Working as a sculptor at the end of the 1970s, the New York-based artist switched his studio practice in the 1980s to the production of video-works utilizing the suburban social landscape and the experimental form as subject matter, leading him in the 1990s to integrate his skills as a storyteller and sculptor into creating intimate observed worlds in miniature. Geller has been particularly drawn to overlooked or underutilized environments, which can include anything from private imaginary worlds within brick walls to very public sprawling back alleys. He asks the viewer to engage with both what was always there as well as what might be.
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Again. Almost. Again. One more time. is curated by Elisabeth Akkerman 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.
