Now in its seventh iteration, the Mattress Factory's ongoing exhibition series "Gestures," which involves locals -- all of whom aren't necessarily artists -- in the process of creating small site-specific works, is getting national press.
The staff has organized and printed up a collection of photos of the more than 100 works included in all of the exhibitions since the series began back in the fall of 2001.
"It's great to see all of the pictures, to see them as a whole, and how varied and how many there have been since the beginning," says the Mattress Factory's curator of exhibitions, Michael Olijnyk, who has organized each show of the series along with art critic and author Graham Shearing.
"I see the 'Gestures' series as one exhibition that changes and grows with each show," Olijnyk says. "One piece might be fabulous, one piece might not be -- but when you look at the series on the whole, it is a really fantastic thing."
One look at this current "Gestures," and it should be easy to agree that it's a "fantastic thing." For where else could one see an art show that, in essence, functions as a community interactive event?
A cursory glance around the first of four floors at the museum's Monterey Street annex, which holds the exhibition, will prove this. Not only is there an elegant abstract steel sculpture by local ornamental ironworker Peter Lambert, but there is an installation containing more than a thousand photographs of 50 years' worth of patrons (some famous) at Jay's Book Stall in Oakland taken by Jay Dantry, the store's proprietor.
There is even an installation, a mural of sorts, by one of the museum's neighbors, Randy Gilson. He lives just up the street in a very colorful house he painted himself. Most who have been to the Mattress Factory know of it, for one simply cannot miss the rainbow-colored Victorian while driving to the Mattress Factory's parking lot.
"We decided to bring him into the gallery rather than leave him loose," Shearing quips about the neighbor-turned-artist.
But he says, rather seriously, "You will not find any other art museum that would take a risk like the Mattress Factory. We step out of the gallery and ask, 'Who would we like to see create an installation?' Sometimes it is a photographer, sometimes a chef, sometimes a tattoo artist. You never know what you are going to get, but it never disappoints."
Of course, the works done by professional artists always seem to resonate a bit more than those by others.
For example, downstairs, in the building's unfinished basement, George Davis' "Scary Forest," a sound and video piece, proves to be an unnerving onslaught of implications that makes an already eerie place seem even eerier. Upstairs, works by Vanessa German and Jill Larson continue to question viewers long after the opening night's happenings that accompanied each.
German's opening-night performance, "Random Black Girl" -- in which she got in the faces of several visitors, questioning their views on race -- is all but a memory now. But the memory-inspired objects that make up her installation "Fantastic," such as stacked chairs, baby shoes and dolls, remain as the artist's exclamation point.
And all popped now are the 154 balloons that Jill Larson used to fill the room that houses her piece "Chance." Each balloon represents a month of her 14 1/2-year marriage, now over. Only shards of balloons remain scattered among the pins that fill the black-felted table that takes up almost the entirety of the room. Point taken.
The third floor offers equal promise with Alex Smith's video installation "Easter or Ishtar" making a mantra out of a dancing Easter Bunny, and Wendy Osher's referencing the story of Psyche -- the mythic character given the futile task of sorting grain -- in her piece "Psyche's Secret."
Like Smith's piece, Osher references distant cultures, history and religions in a piece that spells out the sentence "Someone is helping you" in bulgur wheat, rice, couscous and poppy seeds.
Finally, the most chilling -- and possibly most effective -- piece may go largely unnoticed. That is, of course, unless one takes the time to read the wall label that accompanies it.
Titled "Everyday" by Edgar Um Bucholtz, it looks only to be a large printed statement on one wall that was copied from a newspaper. It's attributed to a friend of one of the July 7 London subway bombers, but that isn't the crux of the piece. Nearby sits a closed backpack on a simple white chair. Those who read the wall label will quickly realize that this rather benign-looking backpack is filled with all of the ingredients necessary to create a bomb.
Now that's a gesture that makes a statement.
Additional Information:
Details
'Gestures'What : An exhibition of small site-specific works by Edgar Um Bucholtz, Jay Dantry, George Davis, Vanessa German, Randy Gilson, Peter Lambert, Jill Larson, Wendy Osher, Martha Rial, Alex Smith and Terry Young
When : Through Oct. 2. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays; 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays
Where : Mattress Factory annex building, 1414 Monterey St., North Side
Details : 412-231-3169 or www.mattress.org
