Greg Carideo

Building
Nave
To supplement the fragment
The Apple Stretching
Dog Eared Reverie
Storefront
Local Objects
Framework
I used to be a tree

I used to be a tree

Curated by Greg Carideo
foreign & domestic
New York, NY
May 3 – June 7, 2024

Metal is forgiving. You may not see it that way, but it is. It feels alien to us, cold and stiff, inhuman. Metal, though, isn’t static. It can be animated, and then reanimated. It breathes like wood, or us. It carries the touch of its handler, as well as the moisture in the air. Where is metal from? Where are you from?

I used to be a piece of cardboard. I am now covered in 11 years of glue. The shoemaker did this, dabbing me with his brush before hitting the heel. I was part of something larger, a box, a container for whatever. I wear my history, which is both my own and what’s been imposed on me.

The desert is a resting place for a lot of things. Objects are allowed to be there and absorb the environment until they become it. Trees and fences perform this function too. They catch things, trapping them along their path. Art is like the desert or a fence, capturing material and objects, diverting them to a specialized existence.

I used to be a mattress. Now I am only my springs, rusted, the color of dirt, and along with others, I make up a fence. I am perfect for my job as a fence. To think of me young and horizontal, underneath a dreaming body, is as hard to imagine as passing through my interlocking springs.

This room is full of objects that possess histories. They carry the identities of their parts, yet, through assemblage, convey the hand of their maker. What they share, a feeling of mass, aggregation, performs differently throughout the room. Some objects propose a function, while others an escape. All have a sense of purpose.

- Greg Carideo

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