Exhibition Essay

by Mike Curran

Andy’s St. Paul studio is located on the top floor of a square building wedged between wholesale warehouses and a heating equipment supplier. His aluminum and glass structures are good company in this industrial setting, where they stand sure-footed. But in Around or between answers, a few of these structures have made their way across the river to my backyard at Normal Residential Purposes, where they have been planted in soft soil. Now they are slowly sinking.

Shedding the protections of a climate-controlled studio subjects the structures to the whims of a temperamental Minnesota climate. The ground itself becomes unpredictable: in May, the soil could be hardened by a late frost or soaked through and turned porous under a sudden downpour—the intensity of which will only increase as the region continues to warm; those storms might bring winds that will rattle the freestanding structures. With Around or between answers, Andy has released some of the control he has carefully maintained in previous projects, which have often involved bare glass and dangling electronics.

But the relationship between these structures and the natural world is not antagonistic. Rather than contend with these elements, Andy has welcomed their participation. He has removed the backlight of a video monitor, making the sun its light source—just like the surrounding trees and shrubs. (When he first wandered through the backyard to identify places to install, he reminded me of someone rearranging houseplants to ensure their access to the best possible light.) A nimble and inventive builder, Andy tends to his works as if tending to living beings with basic needs. He built impermeable roofs, and constructed a wider base for one to ensure it could properly distribute its weight atop eroding ground.

With the addition of roofs and platforms on otherwise minimal aluminum frames, the structures begin to resemble familiar street infrastructure like bus shelters and lampposts. Under a certain light, the yard feels like a crumbling and overgrown extension of Nicollet Mall, where you might expect the monitors to project advertisements for credit card companies or personal injury lawyers. However, the structures’ most striking resemblance is with the power lines above, which are made of the same stuff: like most overhead lines, they are composed of tightly coiled aluminum. In recent years, hundreds of wildfires along the West Coast—which caused haze to hang over the Twin Cities late last summer—have sparked when trees fell on similarly exposed aluminum wires. Elsewhere in the nation, workmen in fluorescent jackets repair high voltage power lines that swerve across Texas, where the energy grid failed during an unprecedented stretch of cold. As Andy calls our attention skywards and I notice our own strands, I am reminded of the inadequacies of our current equipment; we have twisted aluminum into a material in opposition to a natural world that is at once on fire, frozen, and sinking.

In contrast, Andy’s use of aluminum honors the material’s finiteness. Many of the structures’ parts are repurposed from previously leftover bits; after Around or between answers’ brief run, these pieces will likely be remade into the components of future structures. Beyond exemplifying a resourcefulness necessary to weathering the Anthropocene—a geological age marked by the excess waste we produce—this approach brings to mind the fact that all the matter we have on our planet now is all the matter we will ever have. That blunt understanding materializes in the design of each structure, where there is seemingly no excess and every individual segment is deliberately placed to support another; their anchoring systems leave behind holes no larger than what a squirrel might dig.

The question of what gets left behind is particularly relevant in Around or between answers—and not simply because of the materials used. In both videos we see the hands of Andy’s child, Alys, playing with dirt. In one, he piles it atop a screen that reflects the sky; in the next, he brushes it around while the display below jumps from satellite imagery of airports to footage from airplane windows. Occasionally Andy’s hands make an appearance and also paw at the soil or graciously accept a bit of dirt that Alys offers. Such intimate scenes unfolding on exposed monitors, fixed to sinking metal structures, beneath surging power lines suggest the need for more tender infrastructure. Alys’ wonder at soft things calls us to replace the hard surfaces that do not serve us, and protect all that is worth saving. The aluminum provides the frame, but their hands hold these structures up.

^{Photographs by Bade Turgut.}