Cornswoggle
Michelle Uckotter & Ryan Nault
June 14 - July 15, 2019
@
Mole End
59-14 Grove St,
Ridgewood, Queens
There’s a moment here among the pieces out perishing in the sun on the street that I like.
To cornswoggle is to break a thing you thought could not be broken, to break it beyond repair. I feel bad for the broken thing so sturdy in your mind. How you could break it specifically because you misunderstood it and now you’re left with its little pieces! Anyway it’s a total loss and it’s absolutely garbage now.
This sounds like a good job for the artist. An artist being an expert in waste management. Waste management being the collection, transportation, and recombination of the broken thing, the cornswoggled thing. The cornswoggled thing being that thing without value, a negative value, a rancid heap to be buried or burned.
But then management comes out of the shadow-skillset of the artist and has something to do with cleaning up your act. Look at the potential creative labor still steaming off the ruined lump. Look how one orange peel might be folded into the shape of a man. Management loves to up-cycle, looks for the low-downest and stinkiest bits to wash and tack, transport, collect and recombine into the recognizable, as potential product, as potential production. When you were called creative it was the manager’s new special on the board.
Waste is what we’re after. Wasted time, money, material. The double cornswoggle: to take it and break it again.
Ryan Nault was born in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1991. In 2011 He moved to Chicago where he received his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. His recent exhibitions include; Faber and Faber, Chicago 2016, Phil Gallery, LA 2017, Sinkhole Projects, Baltimore 2018, Bar 4000, Chicago 2019.
Michelle Uckotter (b.Cincinnati, Ohio 1992) is currently living in Baltimore, Maryland and completed her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her recent exhibitions include Chin Up Bar in Baltimore, MD, Irene Rose in Melbourne, Australia in 2018, and Sinkhole Projects in 2017.
