Plastic bags, straws from perfume bottles and shoelaces – these are belongings you don't normally associate with high art. But why not? Many recognized artists in the fashionable canon draw inspiration from humble materials, from Tim Noble and Sue Webster's sculptures constructed from household trash and stuffed animals to Charles Long's cigarette butts and bird droppings recovered from the LA River.
“The Poetics of Dimensions,” a brand new group exhibition in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, celebrates the clever reuse of such common objects—in lots of cases, plain old trash. Hosted by Ghanaian-American curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, the exhibition brings together nearly a dozen artists who work with materials reminiscent of recycled leather, cosmetic containers and single-use plastic.
Anthony Akinbola, a Brooklyn artist who has exhibited on the Guggenheim, weaves colourful abstract tapestries out of durags, the hair coverings you may buy for 19 cents on Amazon. Moffat Takadiwa, who lives in Zimbabwe, uses post-consumer waste that Western countries dump in his country's scrapyards to create intricate sculptures from toothpaste tubes, computer keyboards and spray cans.
You might just walk away from this with a brand new hesitation about throwing things within the trash.
Details: The exhibition runs Wednesday through Sunday through February 23, 2025 on the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, 345 Montgomery St., San Francisco; Free admission, icasf.org
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