It’s time to announce the new installations by five brilliant artists from across the country and around the world as part of Factory Installed 2021, opening on Friday, March 12, 2021!
New work by Luftwerk, Andréa Stanislav, Jeffrey Augustine Songco, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti and Meir Tati* will lift your spirits, challenge your perceptions and perhaps transform you along the way. Read more below for a preview of our upcoming exhibiting artists and installations before they debut at the Mattress Factory.
Time slots are available now, and remember – we have new extended hours from 11-6 PM Thursday through Sunday, and our late/date night is Wednesdays from 11-8 PM! Take a fun and safe visit to the Mattress Factory by purchasing timed-entry tickets here.
Luftwerk, a Chicago-based duo, explores light, color, and perception in immersive, experience-based installations. Luftwerk applies their own interpretive layer to the sites in which they work, integrating the physical structure, historical context, and embedded information into each piece.
Open Square
Developed during COVID-19 lockdowns, Open Square reflects on the habitat that defines everyday experience. Light and dark. Cold and warm. The cyclical flow of the installation is a contemplation of the physical experiences of interior space and how perception can shift through color, light and sound.
Andréa Stanislav’s hybrid practice spans sculpture, immersive multimedia installation, video, and public art. Her work mines cultural histories to question and reflect the present and future through a lens that melds beauty, horror and the unexpected.
Surmatants – Mars Rising
An elegiacally visceral response to the COVID-19 pandemic in three acts — converging Pittsburgh’s Slavic immigrant labor history and 13th century plague informants. Tenants of Russian Cosmism and transcendence are evoked through Jesse Gelaznik’s musical compositions, paired with dances by John Harbist and renowned choreographer Željko Jergan and performed by the Tamburitzans.
Jeffrey Augustine Songco explores the complexity of self-portraiture and the construction of identity through installations that incorporate self-portrait photographs, videos and sculptures. His work deeply considers his identity as a gay American man of Filipino ethnicity, playfully casting himself as the protagonist of a postcolonial queer narrative.
Society of 23’s Trophy Game Room
In 2008, Songco established the Society of 23 as a non-linear narrative documenting a secret brotherhood of 23 mysterious men — all portrayed by the artist himself. Within this safe space filled with recognition awards and leisurely activities, the Society of 23 reveals the complexities of constructing an identity of American greatness.
Sarawut Chutiwongpeti uses travel as both the inspiration for and content of his work, viewing each new destination as its own “Utopia Station,” where wishes come true, one by one, from one to the next. Through his work and travels, he searches for answers that can help reverse the subordination and objective materialism.
Wishes, Lies and Dreams >> The Journey into the Invisible World…
Juxtaposing old and new materials and technologies, Chutiwongpeti blends personal and historical narratives to explore doubts and questions about what happens when life ends. Does time fade for us? Is it beyond the invisible?
Meir Tati works in diverse mediums of performance, video and installation. His current practice also includes elements of research as he focuses his work on charged global and local issues.
A New Tomorrow That Starts Today
[*please note that this installation will open on Saturday, April 3]
Mutant combinations of political leaders are transformed by the power given to them by their citizens. Are they superheroes, supervillains or both? Tati explores how political ideologies find their way to the minds of people and influence cultures.
