The gathered harvest is refashioned into objects and installations that are utilitarian and functional. A fetishistic fantasy museum/salon, a museum of oddities and taxidermy, of dead things and dead history is curated and installed. The serial killer Ed Gein fashioned human skins into lampshades, clothing, and upholstery for chairs, this practice has a similar structure to that of the relationship of consumption and production that occurs in this body of work. The work becomes a ritualistic killing and display of art, painting, and sculpture. This mode of production digs up history, and investigates its relationship to keepsake, re-purposed materials and furniture as a functional collection that exists in a private sphere of interior space, referencing interior decorating. -Devon Costello

This is Devon Costello’s second solo exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann. A New Yorkbased artist, he is currently participating in a residency at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. His previous exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann was in June 2006. Recent group exhibitions include, The Incomplete, curated by Manon Slome and Hubert Neumann, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY; Beneath the Underdog, curated by Nate Lowman and Adam McEwen, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY; and Supernature Times Nature, Rocket Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; and The Poster Project, which he curated with Ilya Lipkin, Kantor/Feuer 10th Avenue window, Participant Inc. and Printed Matter, New York, NY.