Sam Durant "Dead Labor Day"
Paula Cooper Gallery "521 W 21 St."
This event has ended.
The show will include a large sculpture based on the scaffold used to hang the famous Chicago anarchists known as the Haymarket Martyrs (shown in the image above). Monument-like in scale, the sculpture is not an exact reproduction of the gallows but rather an outline of the structure that doubles as a worker’s break room. Viewers can access the platform using an industrial steel staircase, and once on top get a drink from a water dispenser.
This exhibition partly grows out of Durant’s recent work on capital punishment comprised of small-scaled architectural models of historically significant gallows and drawings with statistical imagery. However, it also addresses issues of labor history and its relevance to today’s economic conditions. According to the artist, historical accounts of the economic conditions in which the Haymarket affair took place reveal striking similarities to today’s relationship between labor and capital, especially with respect to the weakening of labor laws and worker unions’ loss of leveraging power.
Media
Schedule
from March 13, 2010 to April 17, 2010