Fiber uniforms, foam furniture and chicken breeding are near-meaningless terms to anyone who has not yet visited Andrea Zittel's "Critical Space" art exhibit.
Zittel's wardrobe, furniture exhibits and other models will be on display until Jan. 7 at the Albright-Knox art gallery. Her groundbreaking installations express underlying themes regarding the complex notions of space, time and an overall enhanced perspective on Western culture.
Zittel is accredited with a Masters of Fine Arts focused on Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. She was raised in California and had also lived in New York, which impacted her work greatly. Her unique philosophy is manifested not only in her physical designs but also in the list of 14 principles that she has entitled "What I Know For Sure," located in the gallery's upper level.
The first theory she identifies is that "It is human trait to want to organize things into categories. Inventing categories creates an illusion that there is an overriding rationale in the way the world works."
Through her work Zittel discusses how people are compelled to exert control over their surroundings by the classification and arrangement of personal space. "A-Z Cellular Compartment Units," a model she constructed in 2001, reinvents the traditional suburban home. This display is a unique conception of time, space and purpose by examining how people try to feel liberated within constrained areas.
The double level unit is made of birch plywood panels finished with steel borders and contains round windows through which the viewer can see miniature rooms. Each of the attached boxes is designed as a specific room with its own function allowing for certain activities. This portrays the division that Zittel experienced firsthand when she temporarily moved into the small complex.
Her growth and success as an artist can be attributed to her ability to "enter into" her own work.
"Not a lot of artists put themselves in what they do," said Clint Holmes, a local Buffalo resident. "Very few consider themselves their own subjects but she puts herself in it to see if it's tolerable."
Zittel's work studies the needs of individuals, especially those who are a product of a modern, consumerist, American society. She views organization as a manner of increasing efficiency. This cultural critique is also apparent in her model entitled "Repair Works," from 1991.
For "Repair Works" she took abandoned artifacts, such as a wooden nightstand missing two legs, on top of which she placed a sculpture of an elephant upside down with teacups and plates resting on the soles of its feet. This was a response to the abundance of damaged objects she saw when first moving to New York, where she says she felt "overwhelmed by decay," a contrast to her former home in California, where "everything had been all about progress and newness."
Through "Critical Space" Andrea Zittel repeatedly throws out the conventions that have become so accustomed to daily life, introducing new solutions to space and time. The frameworks that she presents these solutions make her designs not only aesthetically pleasing, but philosophically provoking as well.
Student tickets are priced at $8, but there is free admission on Fridays from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.
