Home.Exhibitions
| 
Spy Unit: Red Riding Hood Stand
|
America the Beautiful
After 1998, the year my son was born, I had multiple experiences
with rural—what one might also call pastoral—America
which triggered my interest in hunting stands as art object. My
wife and I bought 23 acres of undeveloped land near Laurelville,
Ohio, and the Hocking Hills. In three short years, our hopes for
a peaceful retreat, for a bit of ‘natural living,’ were
soundly debunked by the neighbors who abutted our property. Our
southern neighbor repeatedly encroached on the land during hunting
season, erecting stands, leaving animal detritus, etc., and was
heard plotting to cut down our grand black walnut trees to sell
for profit; our northern neighbor, a friendly guy, confided he was
a member of the KKK and had threatened to “bury the black
ass of a disrespecting” land surveyor; our eastern neighbor
allowed ten hilly acres of trees, overlooking a stream, to be clear-cut
by the gas company. And the man who previously owned our property,
who had left it littered with thousands of shot gun casings, was
an isolationist serving jail time for shooting the KKK neighbor
over a property line dispute. Among all of these neighbors there
was a palpable hostility towards outsiders, towards government,
and a paranoid protection of their ‘space.’ Our retreat
was not Concord.
During the same time period, we made a cross-country drive to San
Francisco and vacationed in Idaho, the most beautiful state in America.
However, the stark contrast between extreme natural beauty and grotesque
human action is on great display in rural Idaho. With the 2000 election
looming, hatred of then-president Bill Clinton was everywhere: roadside
signs of Clinton with bullet holes in his head; Clinton as featured
bulls-eye on targets; signs touting his human worthlessness. Every
small store we visited had such merchandise, along with hunting
regalia, ‘trespass and die’ signs, etc. It was a scary,
inhospitable place.
Surely these attitudes and political positions exist in the urban
and suburban arenas of this country, however, they seem particularly
prevalent and outspoken in certain pockets of the vast, rural, never-ending
America. Over the past decade, much of my work has been an exploration
of this country’s vast internal landscape, and the ways in
which the natural world, and the historical evolution of cultural
values such as rugged individualism (the renegade, the cowboy, the
lone wolf, the scout, the pioneer, the man who stands alone) have
made way for regions defined by their extremities of these characteristics.
The most tenacious and powerful hate groups in this country exist
in its most beautiful, isolated regions. The early American novelist
James Fennimore Cooper would have had much to write about Eric Rudolph’s
survivalist, Outward Bound years in the North Carolina woods as
he hid from charges of hate crimes and murder. I think about Emerson
and his giant transcendentalist eyeball, and of how he’d see
America today.
Over the past several years I’ve read quite a few American writers,
I’ve watched John Wayne cowboy movies, I’ve visited Walden
Pond, trying to get a fix on the origination of American individualism
and its extreme manifestation, isolationism. Simultaneously I’m
interested in other living spaces, like the gated communities of suburbia
and the urban high-rises, and how space and overreaching height are
symbolic of prestige, power, separation from the masses; safety as
synonymous with privilege. These interests are reflected in the work
shown here, “Cloud Cover,” and "Red Riding Hood Stand"
first shown at the Neuberger Museum in 2001, and in a Safe House,
Lookout, and Domestic Fortress in "Protected
Comforts: The Sculpture of Todd Slaughter” at the Chicago Cultural
Arts Center, 2002.
More
pictures of Red Riding Hood
Pictures
of Cloud Cover
Pictures
of Thomas Jefferson
|
Safehouse:
Protected Comforts
|
Protected Comforts: The Sculpture of Todd
Slaughter (Chicago Cultural Center)
“Protected
Comforts: The Sculpture of Todd Slaughter” Exhibition, Chicago
Cultural Arts Center
Catalog essay by Lanny Silverman, Exhibition Curator, Chicago Cultural
Center
“For this exhibiton, Todd Slaughter had transformed the Sidney
R. Gates Gallery into a maze-like cluster of installations and architectural
spaces that house sculptural objects and video projections. Many
of these installations and objects were specifically created for
this exhibition, which also incorporates several of Slaughter’s
sculptural objects andd installations from the last ten years. All
of these works treat the domestic realm, and the expressive power
of architecture also looms large as a theme. Slaughter has a particular
sensitivity towards materials, and his long-standing use of organic
materials is now joined with synthetic ones to provoke thoughts
about what is real or surreal, natural or artificial. Manipulations
of scale and perspective abound as well. The rich variety of experiences
the artist provides us with, all lead the viewer to examine the
wealth of ideas contained in our seemingly banal worlds. Read
More>
More
pictures
Family Dinner Video
Reviews
|
Homemaking |
Comfort Zones: Domestic Galaxies (Art Museum
of University of Memphis, 1998)
“At Home with a Telescope” essay and
all project descriptions for this exhibition are written by Leslie
Lubbers, Director, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
“We all know about comfort zones, literal and metaphorical,
and most of us have need of situations that offer relief from
social, intellectual, economic, or environmental tensions. A house,
when it is a psychological refuge as well as a domicile, is the
most obvious comfort zone. In Todd Slaughter’s work, this
might be futher described as a domestic galaxy- clusters of beings
and objects held together in a complex or relationships that constitutes
private life. Comfort Zones: Domestic Galaxies, combines
Slaughter’s latest work, “Protected Comforts,”
a house sculpture, and three other pieces related to his meditaions
on the individual human’s relationship to the interminglesd
physical, social, and psychic universes.”
•“Beyond the Gates of the Animal Kingdom,
Reconfiguration, is a galaxy of pink and crystal-furred, life-sized
house cats. Optimally adapted to locating comfort zones wherever
they find themselves, these creatures tumble blithely through the
endless twinking heavens represented by mirrors on the ceiling and
floor reflecting the cats as well as the curious viewer who temporarily
joins the cats in their celestial antics.” Denture material,
crystals, salt dry ice; some indiv. Cats,12”x9”x5”,
12”x27”x17”,1996.
• “Home Making, Reconfigured: a galaxy made of hundreds
of pieces of minature furniture, assembles wooden tables, chairs,
hutches, couches, sideboards, beds, chests, cabinets- somebroken,
most well made in various period styles, allcarefully charred black,
and all suspended above the viewer in a dense yet, delicate tilted
plane. Amidst the dark objects, rotating slowly like planets,
are three illuminated silver figures- a flying woman, a figure in
fetal pose, and a whirling dervish.” 4’ x 12’
x 8’
• “Protected Comforts,”
like a child’s dream playhouse, is a lluminous, gabled structure
raised atop a foundation of metal bars. Its structural members,
roof, and walls are of a rigid translucent white materal imprinted
with mysterious dark patches and marks- magnifications of
human skin. A mission-style wooden chair, its height amplified by
a metal base, is its single furnishing. Activated by the entering
viewer, the house is transformed inot a theater with the occupation
as its central, if passive, character while various uninvited visitors,
some threatening, some merely pestiferious, peer in windows, rattle
locks, or climb onto the roof, branding clubs, cameras, and candy
bars.”1998, aluminum, polycarbonate, video, projected still
images, wooden chair; 11’ x 6’ x 5’
• “Trying to Find You, is a hugh silvery pitcher
hovering in the gallery, upended. Rotating slowly, it emits strange
music, sometimes low and nearly inaudible, sometimes louder and
plaintive. Visible only if the viewer stands under the pitcher’s
mouth is a violin that resonates the sound created by the rotation.
Meanwhile,l like a chilly moon, the pitcher casts its shadow across
the floor.” 1998, silver-leafed violin and aluminum pitcher
More
pictures
|
Beyond the Gates of the Animal Kingdom |
Models of Galaxy Clusters: Domestic Comforts:
Aronoff Center for the Arts
Taking Care, 1996, cast stainless steel orchids and wire
In these works, celestial space has been appropriated as a frame
of reference for domestic images. The crystallized cats, skin-imprinted
houses, and distressed doll house furniture galaxy are intended
to flip between the assurance of home and a sense of personal comfort
to alternate realizations of chaos, isolation, numbness and imbalance.
More
pictures
|
Landscapehats, Wexner Center |
Landscapehats (Wexner Center for the Arts, Artists Space,
Darke County);
mixed media; inspired by a trip through the interior of Spain in
1990 and the collecton of clinical essays,“The Man who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat” by Dr Oliver Sachs; a floating landscape
of ten hat-like.; 40’ x 250’ x 10’, 1994.
Initially commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts
in 1992-1993, the installation was reconfigured and subsequently
shown at Artists Space, New York, 1994, and the Darke County Art
Center, Greenville, Ohio, 1994.
More
pictures |
Desk and Hand, April, 1993 |
Revolution, Evolution (Akron Art Museum)
Essay by Barbara Tannenbaum, Chief Curator, Akron Art Museum, 1993
“The sculptures of Todd Slaughter in this exhibition will
destroy themselves while they are on display. Their demise will
occur not because of a sudden cataclysm but rather through a gradual,
relentless process of disintegration. Each work sets two elements
in opposition, one standing for the human body and the other representing
the external forces that form our environment. These may be natural,
societal or psychological ones; they are represented by abstract
geometric forms such as spheres or cylinders that defy specific
associations. Two types of relationships are possible between the
two elements: one may prove to be the stronger and enduree, but
more frequently they destroy each other." Read
More>
More
pictures
|
Hospice |
Hospice (1991) cast aluminum
weeds and wild flowers, aluminum powder on vellum; from a visit
to an estate in the south of France which had been a Benedictine
monastary and hospice. I was privileged to spend time in the adjoining
cemetary. This small cemetery was a tranquil and isolated space,
enclosed by high walls. It contained rows of delicate, metal crosses
and tall weeds that grew among the crosses from the dusty soil.
More
pictures |
|
