Tending, 2022-2023

In conjunction with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Kiosk Gallery, I created a temporary, immersive bricolage installation in the back room of the gallery space.

From the exhibition text:

TENDING is an installation of found objects, construction materials, cast forms, drawings, sound, and light, temporarily transforming the back room of the gallery. In the process of creating an immersive space, artist Eric Dodson brings together ideas, emotions, and materials from his professional work, creative life, family responsibilities and personal history to completely capsize and reanimate a corner of his workspace.

Artist Statement:
This exhibition reflects on my time, effort and care spent in preparing and maintaining the gallery space, as well as my experiences with caregiving with respect to our home and family. The work is an extension and expansion of my previous explorations with found objects, building materials, and construction processes.

My assemblage work examines objects and materials outside the context of their intended usage patterns. Here, this is applied to building materials such as drywall, stucco, and plaster. This questions the manner in which we tend to overlook and take for granted structures around us that influence our daily lives. The delineations of space which guide us through our days are largely encountered subconsciously, as are the internal boundaries which guide our psychologies. This affects ideas of our own self-identities and collective identities, concerning where we fit in the world – where we are allowed to move freely, and where we are prohibited from movement. 

This installation project functions more as an overall space in itself than as a grouping of discrete art objects. The improvised construction includes functional objects I’ve made for each of the gallery spaces we’ve inhabited, and scrap materials leftover from those processes, as well as objects accumulated from each of the spaces. These materials are presented alongside evidence of my artistic practice, including art objects and the leavings produced by the processes of making them. The structure recalls the very act of creating a space to house or contain something, and plays against notions of perfectionism and standards of technical performance.

This project also included a soundscape I created, featuring digital manipulations of original analog recordings. The sound was played back through speakers built into the assemblage installation.
Listen here: Syncope Ensemble “II: Tending” 

(installation/detail images):

Tending, 2022-2023
installation with soundscape (1:09:41)
sheetrock, plaster, stucco, wood, burlap, plywood,
expanded metal lath, metal screen, graphite, grout,
found objects, stereo system, audio speakers, latex
paint, stones, bones, dirt, twine, styrofoam,
cardboard, LEDs, electric fan.

Bricolage Studies Series: Drawing #3309, 2021
graphite on sheetrock
Bricolage Studies Series: Drawing #3609, 2021
graphite on sheetrock
Bricolage Studies Series: Drawing #2959, 2021
graphite on sheetrock