STORAGE
CLOSET AND
SHOOTING
GALLERY
© Owen Premore
Storage Closet and Shooting Gallery, 2007
San Jose, CA
Electronics, lights, wood, fabric, steel, cardboard, rubber bands, mixed
media installation.
This piece was constructed around the premise of turning a large art gallery into a utilitarian space, or a storage closet, that would return back to an art space after a viewer/ participant entered the “closet.” The art gallery was situated amongst offices, classrooms and other closets, so passersby familiar with the gallery would recognize the spatial and functional change of the space, while those less familiar might dismiss it as an open closet or question their memory of the space.
When the participant entered the closet, the fluorescent lights turned off and a false ceiling of tabletop lamps turned on. The false ceiling and false walls were skinned in carefully selected shear fabric that would allow just enough light and detail to make out the lamps without showing the entirety of the gallery space. The lamps were attached to a program that changed lighting patterns dependent on the actions of the participant in the room. The floor was covered in rubber bands and the boxes on the far wall contained targets. If the viewer struck the targets with a rubber band, a recording of one of eighteen graduate students saying the word “shoot” in a tone of frustration is played in composition with other sounds and instrumentation. These sounds triggered lights in the unseen gallery space.
The boxes of the left wall, when tilted, played found recordings that describe a place that could be the city of San Jose. The recordings were from cassette tapes found at flea markets and thrift stores throughout San Jose. Some of these boxes also changed lighting patterns. An old reel-to-reel recorder in amongst the boxes contained a 20 minute audio piece called “Dynamic Art Making.”
