The FRONT Triennial may be drawing to a close, but you still have two weekends to see some of the exhibits you might have missed. One of the best installations “off the beaten track” is Sculpture Bases, by Cleveland artist Lauren Yeager.

Yeager was one of the six local artists chosen by FRONT to create a commissioned work for the Triennial, and the resulting installation can be found in a nondescript vacant warehouse in Ohio City. Sculpture Bases is a wry examination of how fine art, in particular, sculpture is presented. Known for using a characteristically dry humor in her conceptual work, here Yeager is questioning where “sculpture” ends and the sculpture base begins. By omitting the sculpture part, we are left with only her curious bricolage bases, placed strategically around the large room like life-sized chess pieces.

Comprised of mostly recognizable items, these pedestals were put together using unaltered found objects such as styrofoam coolers, milk crates, a Phoenix Suns trashcan, a globe, broken statues, tool boxes, plastic little tikes chairs, propane tanks, coffee tables, trash cans, and various kinds of garden planters. Yeager frequently uses recognizable materials in her work – as she explains this “allows the works to trickle out of the exhibition context and follow the visitor back into the regular world.” But conversely, these everyday objects help guide the viewer into her world.

Some of the bases easily transport the viewer back to their original context, to the monotonies and routine of daily life – to ponder their original use. With these, the absence of the missing sculpture is most keenly felt.

 

But others take on the appearance of completed sculptures – and many utilize items that look very like traditional sculpture bases. This cunning interplay between the finished the unfinished, what is and what isn’t – has the viewer playing along with Yeager’s game.

 

It’s a delicate balancing act, determining what is and isn’t sculpture – what is a base or a finished piece – and at the same time it’s also a literal balancing act – as objects rest precariously in the towers of Yeager’s creation.

Normally, sculpture bases are meant to be smooth mediators between the art object and the setting – and also to complement and support the work in question. In Yeager’s world, this traditional dichotomy no longer exists, allowing the viewer a much deeper interaction with the question at hand. Yeager has always had a knack for organizing seemingly banal objects into something far more complex, and for FRONT, she does not disappoint.

 

 

 

 

You can visit the installation for the next two weekends – there is ample parking in the building’s lot:

Vista Warehouse A
2048 Fulton Rd, Cleveland, OH 44113
Hours: Friday – Sunday 11am-5pm, until September 30