OyG Vestibule Space – Probable Lots – Devin Balara

Probable Lots
Devin Balara
Curated by Will Hutnick
April 15 – June 19, 2016

Opening Reception:
Friday, April 15, 2016, 6 – 10pm

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present a new site-specific installation by Devin Balara in OyG’s Vestibule. Probable Lots materializes the artist’s larger curiosity about nature’s potential for spontaneous self-domestication.

In Probable Lots, two works exist in conversation and function as scenic overlooks, pointing to a possible mesh or plot. A mass of green flows down the steps and appears to seep beyond the Vestibule’s boundaries, treating the hallway as a site to be landscaped. The rug-form invites viewers to speculate as to its scale (a garden? farm? continent?) and about the stages of planning in which it is suspended. 

A continuation of Balara’s Greening project (in which the artist purchased 56 green rugs, installed them as grassy surrogates in paved suburban spaces, and then returned them to the store), this new iteration involves collected rugs, heavily used, dyed, deconstructed, and up-cycled to propose new possibilities—greener still.

The plan manifests around the corner in a loose grid of snakes. Here, domestication functions in response to training – supposing that we increase the probability of such organized phenomena the more we alter our environment to collapse into predictable patterns. There is also the suggestion of a halt in a natural process, such as migration, as the snakes have cemented in formation. Yet the form is far from rigid; it vibrates with textile-like potential, suggesting the myriad of yet-untested patterns.

For more info, please contact Will Hutnick at whutnick@gmail.com