May 2008
By Kim Biel
Young At Art: 15 Artists Under 35 - Bari Ziperstein, Los Angeles
Standing in front of a wall in her studio that holds only a tiny fraction of the domestic objects that she uses in her sculpture, Bari Ziperstein recalls, "My father was a collector and so I grew up knowing the difference between a Haywood-Wakefield bedroom set and an Eames chair. I'd talk about these differences at the 4th grade lunch table! This pleasure in aesthetics, like knowing that a swirl in Bakelite of one color is more valuable than a swirl in another color, has really informed the hierarchy of my thinking about objects." Dangling from a high shelf are the twisted and kinked electric cords of lamps that will be central to several of Ziperstein's upcoming sculptural installations. In addition to plaster and Foam-core, her palette is comprised entirely of items salvaged from a thrift store near her studio in L.A.'s Glassel Park.
Ziperstein's plans for an upcoming installation at BOX 13 ArtSpace in Houston, Texas are indicative of the turn her work has taken over the past two years. From her enormously successful solo exhibition, "(This Isn't Happening) Popular Hallucinations for Your Home" at BANK in the spring of 2007 to a solo show at Pulse Miami, Ziperstein has expanded her scope to include sculpturally immersive environments. While Ziperstein's earlier work focused on photographic documentation of sculptural interventions in her own home and small-scale sculptural objects in the gallery, her new work will depend upon the viewer's interaction with her objects in a very real setting. Ziperstein's sketch for her Dining Room Table Project describes an angular white table strewn with objects. Dominating the space are twenty lamps, hanging above and stacked in the center of the dining table. Ziperstein describes the work as a prop in the performance of a dinner party; the sculpture is designed to call attention to itself and frustrate easy communication between party-goers.
Of her collaboration with Better Homes and Gardens photographer Grant Mudford for the "Popular Hallucinations" exhibition at BANK, Ziperstein says, "I'm interested in the viewer not only seeing something familiar, but also something really hallucinatory. I'd like to inspire the viewer to think about how they would actually negotiate the space if they lived there." Mudford's glossy magazine aesthetic of light-filled and artfully arranged rooms makes even the bold intrusions of Ziperstein's sculptural forms appear normal, even desirable. Pointing to a white trapezoidal object in one of Mudford's photographs, Ziperstein says, "I feel like these are futuristic views of a time when there's no more room for consumers to consume, but designers have still found a way to say, 'Oh, well, this space underneath the chair? I'm going to make you buy something for that!' Isn't that what the Container Store is all about?"
Ziperstein sees her own work as part of this process of consumption. Rescuing a cast-off object form the thrift shop then returning it to the marketplace, Ziperstein asserts that her participation in the process revivifies the object making what was once mass-produced and unremarkable into a unique object. "In a way," she says, "I'm completing the cycle."