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