Zach Feuer Gallery, in collaboration with Mary Boone Gallery, is pleased to present two exhibitions by Phoebe Washburn: Nunderwater Nort Lab, a site-specific installation, at Zach Feuer Gallery and Temperatures in a Lab of Superior Specialness, an exhibition of new sculpture, at Mary Boone Gallery.

Phoebe Washburn’s work explores generative systems based on absurd patterns of production often created by inefficiency. The rules that govern Washburn’s systems of production inform her sculpture and installation formally as well as conceptually.

In Nunderwater Nort Lab, Washburn has devised a site and context specific installation that juxtaposes two seemingly unrelated activities – art and lunch. Lunch is a daily activity, often overlooked, that occasionally infiltrates the gallery art viewing experience. In this installation, visitors will smell lunch as well as observe it being made and eaten inside the installation. The main structure, composed of blocks of scrap wood that have been repurposed and then ordered from previous installations, contains observational ‘worm holes’ that extend into the structure from which visitors can glean, in addition to hear and smell, bits of the activities occurring inside. In Washburn’s work, everyday objects and activities are reinterpreted to create appreciation for process and experience.

Washburn’s titles often play on the sounds and meanings of words. In previous works, the subject was designated ORT, a gibberish word that played on the word art. In these works, viewers were encouraged to participate in the system; the system was open to outside influences. The key word in the new work is Nort. Although volunteers are integral to the system, the structure is neither open to the viewer nor involves the viewer’s participation in the work. It is, instead, closed to external influences.

At Mary Boone Gallery, Washburn will present new sculpture. These works, like the installation, are composed of material that has been repurposed from previous installations including tables, wood, garden hose, painted rocks and dyed shells. Not only do these works address formal concerns, but as in the installations, create a delicate and precarious balancing act between process, production and product.

Phoebe Washburn was born in 1973 and received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Washburn has had exhibitions at the kestner gesellschaft in Hannover, 2008 Whitney Biennial in New York, Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Washburn lives and works in New York, NY.