Material World

Seven artists have been invited to transform MASS MoCA’s second and third floor galleries into a series of site-specific installations. The selected artists, Michael Beutler, Orly Genger, Tobias Putrih, Alyson Shotz, Dan Steinhilber, and collaborative team Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, are known for their innovative investigations of both space and material. Each tend to use a single, simple material in a given work. Over the past several decades, many artists have embraced evermore modest, and even precarious, mediums: Material World will explore the formal—even architectural—possibilities of a range of modest and surprising materials including paper, plastic, cardboard, and rope. Seen within the context of MASS MoCA’s reclaimed factory space, with its own rich assemblage of brick walls, steel beams, and layers of paint, the new works will address some of the historic, social, and symbolic associations of the materials under investigation, while offering viewers an unexpected visual and spatial experience.