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DODGEgallery
15 RIVINGTON STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10002
INFO@DODGE-GALLERY.COM
 
FILLER: ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES
IMAGE: FILLER, installation view. HI-RES
On View: November 13 — December 22, 2010
Reception: November 13, 2010  
 DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE AS PDF
Download the press release to see the full text.

NEED SERVICE? PRODUCT PROJECTS ART! PROJECTS PRODUCE ART! Environmental Services is the answer to your organizational, construction, and cleaning needs. Doug Weathersby, Owner/Operator of ES, is a stand-up guy who will take care of your old paint cans, build shelves for your tools, construct a shed for your lawnmower, or install your art collection. Doug brings solutions with a positive, can-do attitude. He puts the fun in function. Please contact (his email) to inquire about services that are right for you!

While Doug is organizing your storage system, he also makes art customized from the detritus, dust, and objects that are available to him on site. He is your answer to getting things done and getting art made. You can think of his work as a commission, or not. The end result is often temporary site-specific installation (removable upon request), photography, video, and objects constructed from discarded materials. At $40/hour with a 2 hour minimum, Doug will provide manual labor and create customized art for your collection. (Acquisition is an additional cost and is optional.)

Between jobs, Doug has exhibitions at art galleries. For his first solo show in NYC at DODGEgallery, Doug will provide 12 framed “Logs” that he has been making habitually for the past year. Every day, Doug selects a photograph that he shot the day before while working and/or observing life’s idiosyncrasies. Layered over sections of the photograph in fine print and positioned to achieve optimal visual collaboration between text and image, are Doug’s daily to-do lists.

The text wavers between being meaningful, intimate, and autobiographical and being a straight-forward list of what needs to get done that day. This art has purpose: It is how Doug keeps himself on track. And he does so publically through the medium of Facebook, a site that itself offers a confused relationship between private and public. By posting the logs, Doug is holding himself accountable to accomplishing the said tasks, while exposing his whereabouts to people who want to know why he was unable to meet them for lunch when he was just around the corner collecting wood scraps from the BCA. It is important to acknowledge that just because these logs provide a practical function for Doug, possibly making him more efficient, or at least enabling him to start each day having accomplished two things (making the log and posting it), these logs are not strangers to beauty and pleasure. Some of the images are striking, if not absolutely stunning- caught somewhere between the mundane and the extraordinary. Doug is offering a view of the world through his eyes, partially satisfying our voyeuristic tendencies, while providing the more fulfilling experience of discovering beauty in the unexpected small moments of life. The combination of a daily to-do list with an extraordinary image and/or an image of something extraordinary is familiar to anyone who is alive. Doug is reminding us to navigate our own lives with both greater efficiency and attention. Get it done, but don’t forget to stop and meditate on that dramatically uneven, sheared hedge.

Doug is also considering exhibiting an on-going piece that entails periodic (often anti-climactic) performances, video, and a potentially unsalable object or group of objects. Most of the materials for these installations is re-claimed from ES jobsites, recovered, toxic (if dumped in a landfill), valueless and useless, except when it becomes fodder for his creativity, repurposed as art, and ultimately (hopefully) placed back into the environment as art. For Doug, this process, which culminates with a visionary collector, is the ultimate form of recycling. Not only is Doug friendly, his art is environmentally friendly, which brings us to the title of his exhibition, Filler. Rather than filling the land, Doug is filling galleries and collections.


Please contact the gallery or Environmental Services to inquire about hiring Doug for his on location services and/or art making.