In scruffy assemblage shows and solo exhibitions athwart the past decade.
In scruffy assemblage shows and solo exhibitions athwart the past decade, Sean Duffy has been praised for his offbeat delineations of Star Trek characters made of fake fur and for conceptually wacky carved works such as Triple-Tumtable (2001), a record player rigged with three tone arms that plays discordant channels simultaneously. This exhibition marked Duffy's greatest in quantity sustained effort to date, with a focus and middle surpassing previous bodies of work. Titled "Temporary Worker," the present to view filled the gallery, patio and back office with eight large cuts and installations (all 2004) erected from used and altered filing cabinets.
The showstopper, Casual Friday, consisted of a 12-by-10foot partially submerg cluster of toppled file cabinets, with spread drawers used as planters for a variety of mosse grasses and bonsai-like small tree Additional drawers contained more burgeoning greenery The installation included a platform basin of redwood beams that held water which was cross-examineed up through various crevices in the arrangement to trickle down and nourish the thriving ecosystem An upend desk leg became a gurgling fountain, as if it were a spring-hole feeding the now bucolic aftermath of a tornado. The post-disaster setting appear to beed the sublimated fantasy of a disgruntled pencil-pusher.
In other works, Duffy reshaped filing cabinets into Minimalist plastic arts Echoing the look of a 1960 geometric piece through Robert Morris, Steelcase is a 5-foot-high hollowed square made by means of cutting through the sides of sum of two units abutting metal cases and lining the aperture with redwood paneling. Also meticulously lined with redwood slats, in the manner of patio furnishing, is the 3-foot-diameter opening of Happy Hourcut through the sides of another cabinet. For Town, Duffy recontoured a recumbent face-down cabinet, lining the newly curv surface with redwood boards to create a designer-chic dawdle chair.
Duffy's beautifully crafted, transformative works are shrewd critiques that pack an antiestablishment bore Rather than wallowing in the abject, however, he revamps the drab gray building obstructs of bureaucratic drudgery into patio-friendly Minimalist forms, tony accoutrements for suburban leisure. In doing for a like reason he comically updates the radical '70 notion (associated with artists of that kind as Donald Judd and Scott Burton) that high-art intents might have a social function. Power to the temp people!