Best Of All Possible Worlds
Thermoplastic, Paint, Wood and Steel
length: 55’
height: 10’ 8”
width: 20
2018
Translucent, vacuum formed casts of salvaged doors delineate the architectural floor plan of an absent apartment. The casts are scarred with paint and wood embedded in their surface - remnants from their making.
Installation site: decordova Sculpture Park and Museum
Essay about this project by Sarah Montross Senior deCordova curator HERE
Untitled
Water, Dispersed Pigments, Linen, Cotton and Abaca Fibers
This commissioned work is inspired by scanning electron microspope photograhs of bone, and the site in which it is installed; a radiology waiting room suite. The work abstracts the micro-architecture of bone with its large scale, tactile dimensionality and vibrant colors.
Conceptualized to be in conversation with patients awaiting imagery of their inner worlds, I shifted the focus from diagnosis and pathology towards an invitation of contemplative abstraction. The project is a meditation on the invisible universal microcosm inside all of us, that is confluent with the greater macrocosm that surrounds us.
The work was fabricated in coordination with master papermakers at Dieu Donné Papermill in Brooklyn New York
Stretched and Still Lies the Midnight
length: 20’
height: 10’
2016
Stretched and Still Lies the Midnight is a site specific photo collage, created for the Opera Viva exhibition in Turin, Italy. The work responds to the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic at the exhibition site, a billboard on a city roundabout in Barriera di Milano, one of Turin's neighborhoods with the largest immigrant population. The title is borrowed from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, a haunting poem of war in which amputated bodies become an emblem of fragmentation and loss.
Anthropocene Series
Ice, Carbon and Abacá
2015 - 2016
Heliogram Series
Sunlight and Silver Gelatin on Archival Paper
height: 48”
width: 32”
2014
Created in the High Desert of Joshua Tree, California, the Heliogram Series is informed by the writings of the 16th century mystic, Jakob Böhme who believed the structure of the universe was revealed to him in a beam of reflected sunlight. In order to collect the desert’s intense light, Melman converted a 500sq/ft container into a giant pinhole camera. At daybreak, when the angle of the sun’s rays were the most concentrated through the camera's aperture, Melman performed a sequence of ritualistic actions, captured as a series of unique, 7-minute exposures.
Best of All Possible Worlds / 02
Thermoplastic, Paint, Wood and Steel
length: 55’
height: 10’ 8”
width: 20’
2012
Installation site: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Translucent, vacuum formed casts of salvaged doors delineate the architectural floor plan of an absent apartment. One cast is embedded in the hillside. The installation emerges from the landscape as if revealed through a process of erosion.
home image
Best of All Possible Worlds / 01
Thermoplastic, Paint, Wood and Steel
length: 55’
height: 9’ 6”
width: 20’
2011
Installation Site: Socrates Sculpture Park Queens, New York
Translucent, vacuum formed casts of salvaged doors delineate the architectural floor plan of an absent apartment. The casts are scarred with paint and wood embedded in their surface - remnants from their making. They capture and bend the changing daylight and mirror the high-rises across the East River.
Central Governor
Gold Leaf, Salt and Saliva.
2010
Currently on view at MoMAPS1 Queens, New York.
In a six-month-long performance, 5,000 pounds of salt block was chiseled and the decommissioned iron furnace was slowly covered in gold leaf. The work, which alludes to the alchemical properties associated with salt and gold, is a long-term installation at the museum.
How You Hold Something Inside Matters
Skin dust and water
Dimensions: Variable
2011
This sculpture is comprised of 101 individual units made of skin dust and water. The dimensions of each unit is identical to the dimensions of a standard masonry brick. These “skin bricks” are stacked and arranged to create a porous wall of variable shapes and sizes responding to the site in which it is installed. As one of the Special Projects for 'Untitled' curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud, “How You Hold Something Inside Matters” was performed by the artist for seven days creating a dynamic evolving line in space.
A Wound Drawn Together
Performance with live feed video and mixed media
2010
Installation and performance. Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial series 'My Turn' in conjunction with Aki Sasamoto
More To Do With Time Than Words
Heat sealed vinyl, activated charcoal, procession poles, transportation device, divination cards, Duties of a Physician, incubator, box of secrets, cordyceps and mixed media
variable
2010
Created in collaboration with Matthew C. Wilson for Materia at Cabinet Magazine Gallery
Johnny On The Spot
Tyvek, wood, steel, fluorescent lights, cast polyurethane and water
length: 40’
height: 24’
width: 32’
2003
Installation Site: Black Rock Desert , Nevada
Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” is enlarged and abstracted, incorporating forms of religious architecture and the human body. A portal allows viewers access to a quiet interior space where white walls frame the open sky. Duchamp’s readymade urinal, once exhibited inside a gallery, becomes a gallery itself in which the viewer becomes the subject.
Jadu Beta
Polyethylene, air, plastic automotive rivets, pvc, wood and digital sound
length: 450 ’
height: 16 ’
width: 120 ’
2004
Installation Site: Black Rock Desert , Nevada
Inflatable plastic subunits are fastened into a honeycombed network to form a giant Mandelbrot. Four tunnels allow viewers access to an interior space where they are surrounded by an eight-channel soundscape, composed by Wolf + Lamb, that incorporates recordings from the sculpture's fabrication. The desert winds, dust, and temperature variations transform the sculpture into a dynamic entity.
Geranium
Burnt wood, steel castors, bone marrow, horse skin, waxed thread, silicone and human hair
height: 8’ 6”
width: 3’ 6”
2008