had tostepbackormovecloserfocus. magnified ordiminishedthebuildingsbeyond,andviewersoften landscape outside.Dependingontheprescription, eachsetoflenses various lenses—asifpeeringthrough someoneelse’s the eyes—to dow overlooking23r prescription lensesandinsertedthemintoawallinfront ofawin- tecture, andtheperception oflandscape.Here Shingathered old New Y people enjoyedit. each project), itchangedthelandscapeofpark,andway frequently involveslocalcommunitiesinthedonationprocess for of ourlivestocreate anewenvironment forthecommunity(Shin picnic ornaponthegrassahotsummer’s day. Usingthecastoffs between thr the resulting circular skinsintoalargecanopythatshestrung ing theumbrellas’ handles,spokes,andspines,shestitchedtogether the citygatheringumbrellas broken bywindandrain.Afterremov- outdoor SocratesSculpture ParkinQueens,NewYork, Shincombed otxs Forthesite-specificpiece contexts. identity have ahistoryofobsolescenceandabandonment,givingtheman repetitive laborreveals herpresence andhand.Hermaterialsoften and reconstructing. Herprocess ofaccumulation,alteration,and sive projects thatinvolvemanyhoursofcutting,ripping,stitching, and sewing.Shincontinuesthisongoingtraditionwithlabor-inten- traditionally femininedomesticlaborssuchasknitting,weaving, and AnnHamiltonthrough theuseofcraft-basedpracticesand artists suchasHannahHöch,Dorothea Tanning, RosemarieTrockel, about materials,thishistoryhasbeenextendedbyalineageof The 2004installation ork, similarlyexplored therelationship betweenbody, archi- that sheattemptstopreserve whilealsobringingitintonew ee trees. Penumbra d Street. Theviewercouldlookthrough the 20/20 pr , attheFrederieke Taylor Gallery, ovided ashadyspotforvisitorsto Penumbra 20/20 (2003), madeforthe engaged boththe dreams andreality. into anelaboratecityperched delicatelyonthebrinkbetween and space, — urban networkofhouse-of-cards-like buildings. of discarded scratch-and-winlotteryticketstobuildaprecarious MuseumofArt,NewYork, Shinhasused$21,496 worth fitting thatherproject forMoMAreworks theoldintonew. Museum liesonthethr speaks toasenseofoptimismandregeneration. Atatimewhenthe ovated buildingsare nearingcompletioninManhattan,Shin’s project eters ofthegalleries.AsMuseum’ toartistslikeShinmakeart outsidethenormalparam- has turned much inthesamewaythatduringourcurrent expansiontheseries it temporarilylostitsspaceduetotheMuseum’s expansionof1984, when topublishingbooks theProjects seriesturned yearsago, Twenty Artwhentheinstitutionisinflux. tory ofTheMuseumModern and deconstr changing theenvironment ofthegallery. viewer andtheoutsideworld,playingwithourperception and look. to fivefeetwide,butwhich,whiledelicate,are sturdier thanthey to makethesetoweringedifices,whichare aboutsixfeettallandup blocks formonumentalyettemporar lionaires, lotteryticketshavebecomethebuilding theworthless failed hopesofordinary peoplewhohaddreamed ofbecomingmil- Assistant Curator Eva Respini Just as Many ofShin’s piecesspeaktotheissuesoflabor, construction, Chance City Chance City Projects 81 uction. Fora2004installation, transforms thousandsofdiscarded tickets lottery , Depa eshold ofanewphaseinitshistory, itisonly addr responds toaparticularmomentinthehis- r tment ofPhotography esses theimpermanenceofarchitecture y structures. Shinusednoglue s newlyconstructedandren- artist. Photo:BillOrcut artist. the variable. Courtesy starch onwall,dimensions Cut fabric(clothes)and Cut Outs Chance City ON THEC Masahiro Noguchi Galle a $ 2 m43.8cm).Cou (1 m82.9cmx243.8 tickets,6x88' lottery rtist andFrederieke Taylorrtist 2 Chance City 1,496 ofdiscarded worth r 3 y , NewYork. Photo: Embodying the (detail). 2003. O . VER 20 0 1 , atthe /2004. r tesy the 94B.F.A. inPainting,PrattInstitute,NewYork 1994 Design& M.S.inTheory, ofArt, Criticism&History 1996 3 Treacy, Caroline Woolard—and herstudentsatPrattInstitute. thanks totheartist’s assistants—DustyLee,MichelleMcCoy, Erin Yepes fortheirworkontheexhibitionandbrochure. Special Hollely, KateJohnson,PeterOmlor, Jennifer Wolfe, andCarlos Claire Corey, DavidFrankel,MaryHannah,Cassandra Heliczer, David havemadethisexhibition possible.IalsothankEllenConti, siasm 2002 1 notes Family Foundation. The exhibitionismadepossiblebythePeterNorton Projects 81 forhisgenerous of I wouldliketothankPeterNorton support acknowledgments NewYork FellowshipinSculpture FoundationfortheArts, 200 2003 TheFabricWorkshop Artist-in-Residence, andMuseum, 2004 selected awards 2004 selected group exhibitions 2003 2004 solo exhibitions 1 education Lives andworksinNewYork Born 1971 inSeoul,SouthKorea biography andexhibitions 1999 2000 2001 2003 1999 the to Laurence Kardish, SeniorCurator, FilmandMedia, whoorganizes Frederieke Taylor ofFrederieke Taylor Gallery. Iamdeeply grateful to membersoftheMoMAstaff whodonatedtheirclothes;andto 2 Brochure © 2004 The Brochure © 2004TheMuseumofModern 9 SkowheganSchoolofPaintingandSculpture,Maine 999 Chance City 1 Terence Riley, ed., Peter Schjeldahl, 2002), p.9. Art, Modern 1 6 April, Projects Architecture, PrattInstitute,NewYorkArchitecture, New York. The LouiseComfor Philadelphia Under Construction, Line Apartment #3F Collector’s Choice Lost andFound:ReclaimedMoments Material Whirled Bar Multitude Nature oftheBeast Open Studios:03 Bits ’nPieces Reconfiguring Space:BlueprintsforArtinGeneral Custom Fit Up andComing:JeanShin&JulianneSwartz Open House:Working inBrooklyn . Counter Culture 444 Penumbra Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NewYork City Br General, NewY Mixed Gr Arts Building,NewYorkArts City. Inter ooklyn, NewY 1 . Grateful acknowledgment is due to the artist, JeanShin; Gratefulacknowledgmentisduetotheartist, . ometer 991, p.99. , Apex Art, NewYork, ApexArt, City , Artspace, NewHaven. , Artspace, national Contemporary Art Fair, Art national Contemporary Madrid. so iwa h rolnMsu fAtutlAgs 5 2004. 15, August until Art is onviewattheBrooklyn Museumof series andwhosesteadfastcommitmententhu- eens @Space1 “ , Artists Space,NewYork, Artists City. , SocratesSculpturePark,Queens,NewYork MoMA QNS:LookingAhead , CynthiaBr , SmackMellonGallery, NewYork. Brooklyn, Judith Shea:Monument Statua , DUMBO , Asian American Arts Centre,NewYork, AsianAmericanArts City. ork City. , The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Art, , TheNewMuseumofContemporary ork. , SsamzieSpace,Seoul. , Art inGeneral,NewYork, Art City. , Exit Art/The FirstWorld,, ExitArt/The NewYork City. t T , Caren Golden Fine Art, NewYork, CarenGoldenFineArt, City. Arts Center,Arts Brooklyn,NewYork. GEN ART if oan Gallery, NewYork City. fany Foundation Biennial Art Award fany FoundationBiennialArt 01 Gallery, Brooklyn,NewYork. : NewVisions ’98 , of Art, , BrooklynMuseumofArt, (New York: TheMuseumof , TheRotundaGallery, r y,” y,” The V , West Chelsea , ARCO illage V , Art in , Art oice , June The M 1 0 u – s September 2 e um of M o enAt e York New Art, dern 7 , 2004

projects 81 jean shin

Jean Shin has a knack for transforming the mundane into the must pass to enter and exit. In this enclosed hallway Shin has made a ently yet still together in the same space, so that the viewers are invited we might be getting a bird’s-eye view of a dense urban skyline. The beautiful. Collecting discarded objects from daily life—old clothes, mural and a corresponding hanging sculpture out of donated work to imagine the dismantling and reconstruction of a separated body. At work contrasts the structural durability of architecture against the broken umbrellas, worn-out shoes, out-of-date eyeglasses—she uses clothes she has gathered from MoMA staffers. She first deconstructed the same time, given the collective nature of the process of donating ephemerality of fabric. Stiffened in this way, the cylindrical shapes of a labor-intensive process of dismantling, alteration, and reconstruc- the garments by cutting out their seams, then flattened the resulting these garments, they come to represent the variety and diversity of the the cuffs also take on the dimensionality of the human figure while tion to breath new life into them. This Korean-American artist makes cutout shapes with starch and wallpapered them along the walls of Museum’s staff. Guards’ uniforms, a curator’s pants, the director’s simultaneously referring to its imperfections, since they have been sculptures and installations from items that once embodied a sense the passageway. In counterpoint to this colorful, textured mural are the oxford shirt—amid the codes of appropriate work wear in the institu- amputated as unnecessary extensions of the body. of comfort, hope, or at the very least practicality. Her materials often garments’ missing seams, which hang above, extending the ceiling “Skin has no edges, clothes do,” the critic Peter Schjeldahl once retain memories of the human body (worn leather shoes that plane, so that visitors walking through the passageway are surrounded wrote,2 and it is precisely these edges of clothes—their seams—that have molded to someone’s feet), the marks of particular events (an by the installation. The artist encourages visitors to pause within the Shin makes allude to the body. Clothes are constructed out of parts, umbrella battered by a violent downpour), or note an absence (a fluidity of Maltzan’s design, heightening their experience of it. patterns that are necessarily designed flat, and that become three- lone sock left behind in the clothes dryer). Shin transforms the left- Shin renders the three-dimensional clothes utterly flat and abstract, dimensional objects that move with and conform to the body only overs of our lives into a visually arresting explosion of form, texture, so that we hardly recognize our own shirts, pants, and jackets. Her play- when they are held together at the edges with stitches. Clothes and color. ful exploration of color and form recalls the formal investigations of mutate when they are worn, washed, and ironed, and are eventually Just as Shin’s installations give new life to old forms, architect color and shape in the work of the artist Sol LeWitt, whose wall draw- discarded when they lose their use, whether because they become Michael Maltzan’s innovative design for the lobby of MoMA QNS ings become rich visual fields that transform the space they occupy, threadbare, they no longer fit, or they cease to be fashionable. Shin reinvented the Swingline Staple factory in Long Island City, the loca- and whom the artist sees as an influence on her work. Similarly, Shin is interested in clothes not only as architecture for the body but also tion of the Museum’s temporary home in Queens. Maltzan trans- makes Maltzan’s QNS thoroughfare vivid with these same properties, for the memory they hold of the human figure. In her 2003 piece formed this cavernous utilitarian structure into a series of ramps, transforming the architecture into an intimate environment that Clothesline (White Oxford Shirts) she reduced seven white oxford passageways, and mezzanines that reflect the “seamless rising and brings the art into close proximity with the viewer, weaving together shirts to their skeletons by cutting the fabric to preserve only the seams. falling of the subway lines above and below the city,” a fluid design architecture and sculpture. Oxford shirts are the staple of the white-collar work uniform, one for that encourages visitors to experience public spaces in motion.1 With Projects 81 the artist suggests that the reality of MoMA QNS each day of the week. Shin stitched their bones together as if on a For Projects 81, Shin has exploited the quality of this seamless is far from seamless. In fact the installation speaks to the impossibility clothesline and hung them limply and loosely, like deflated figures. architecture as a site that encourages a physical encounter with art. of seamlessness, creating beauty through dislocation, highlighting In this work the body is absent—only traces of the figure remain. Taking advantage of the potential for a unique enclosure, she has a network of fragments and fractures and reworking them into an The practice of turning everyday objects into art has a long created a site-specific installation in the passageway leading toward assemblage that only makes sense when seen as an aesthetic whole. tradition, ranging from Marcel Duchamp to Robert Rauschenberg the galleries—the artery through which all visitors to MoMA QNS Shin disassembles the staff’s garments, then reassembles them differ- and on; in itself a challenge to the authority of modernist ideals

tion’s different departments, a sense of individualism emerges, with flashes of bright color and pattern. Yet the continuity of Shin’s undu- lating arrangement of color and shape allows us to see the garments as one piece, a collective portrait of the MoMA workforce. Projects 81 renders visible the Museum’s large staff and hints at the diverse indi- viduals who make up the institution, many of whom go relatively unseen by the public. Shin’s installations not only respond to the environment they occupy but take our bodies into account, since she often recycles clothes, shoes, and other items that have covered and protected our skin. A relationship between the organic and the inorganic appears in many of her sculptures. In the 1999 piece Alterations, waxed pant-cuffs, in a variety of colors and fabrics, are arranged on the floor. The cuffs are excess, cut off and discarded when pants are altered to fit someone who literally falls short of fashion’s standard sizes. Shin uses clothes here for their formal sculptural effects—their inherent size, color, and form. Ordinarily soft and frayed, the pant cuffs are stiffened by wax and arranged to take on an architectural look, so that, looking down,

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Proposal for Projects 81: Cut Outs and Suspended Seams. 2004. Digital rendering by Brian Ripel

Alterations. 1999/2001. Fabric (pants scraps) and wax, dimensions variable. Collection of Peter Norton. Photo: Steven Tucker Penumbra. 2003. Installation at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens. Fabric (broken umbrellas) and thread, 72 x 45' (21 m 94.6 cm x 13 m 71.6 cm). Courtesy the artist. Photo: Masahiro Noguchi

Clothesline (White Oxford Shirts). 2003. Cut fabric and thread, 4' x 12' 6" (91.4 x 3 m 81 cm). Courtesy the artist and Frederieke Taylor Gallery, New York. Photo: Masahiro Noguchi