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Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin

Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin MINING THE URBAN DIVIDE The Work of Matthew McCaslin David Gibson T o be an Installation Artist in the 1980s was to be extremely creative in a form generally perceived to be approaching its grandfatherly phase. Born out of concerns related to the urban experience, and added to that the new availability of huge loft “spaces” in the early days of New York’s SoHo art neighborhood, Installation Art drew attention to a concept of spectacle that borrowed its formal constraint from a sense of objectness. These two elements may seem immediately at odds with one another: the spectacle and the objects, but a spectacle is an event dependent upon the arrangement of given objects, or people. It is perhaps best described as a rearrangement of expectation, and the use of objects or materials in an uncommon manner allows it to be fulfilled more successfully. As people do not conform their everyday activities to the unusual state of affairs that normally creates a spectacle, it is instead formulated among their myriad interactions and the varied uses of the spaces in which their lives intersect. One of the most successful practitioners of Installation Art since the early 1980s has been http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin

Gibson, David
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 26 (2) – May 1, 2004
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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2004 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/152028104323048278
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

MINING THE URBAN DIVIDE The Work of Matthew McCaslin David Gibson T o be an Installation Artist in the 1980s was to be extremely creative in a form generally perceived to be approaching its grandfatherly phase. Born out of concerns related to the urban experience, and added to that the new availability of huge loft “spaces” in the early days of New York’s SoHo art neighborhood, Installation Art drew attention to a concept of spectacle that borrowed its formal constraint from a sense of objectness. These two elements may seem immediately at odds with one another: the spectacle and the objects, but a spectacle is an event dependent upon the arrangement of given objects, or people. It is perhaps best described as a rearrangement of expectation, and the use of objects or materials in an uncommon manner allows it to be fulfilled more successfully. As people do not conform their everyday activities to the unusual state of affairs that normally creates a spectacle, it is instead formulated among their myriad interactions and the varied uses of the spaces in which their lives intersect. One of the most successful practitioners of Installation Art since the early 1980s has been

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art – MIT Press

Published: May 1, 2004

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