Makeovers
Four artists at MACLA rework mundane materials in 'Domestic Alchemy'

By Michael S. Gant

BECAUSE ART should be at least a little dangerous, a warning sign comes with Caleb Duarte's installation Pared (Wall) at MACLA. That pink fluff is real insulation, complete with asbestos—don't inhale too deeply. The large piece consists of framed sections of a wall in progress, with insulation filling the spaces between the studs. The sections sit on concrete piers, forming a semicircle. You enter this space in the same tentative way that kids go playing in half-finished construction projects after the work crews have left. There is a sense of trespassing—of peeking at structural guts meant to be covered up with some kind of concealing facade.

On the other side, a portion of the wall-in-progress is nailed over with drywall panels, one of which is broken away in an irregular curve. Various architectural marks, disconnected images (an airplane, a brush), phrases and hermetic graffiti are drawn on the sheetrock with charcoal and pencil. One painting-size rectangular portion contains a half-finished but technically adept drawing of a man with his arm outstretched; his eyes are closed, perhaps in pain, perhaps in repose. Are these the remnants of an artist's studio being remodeled for gentrification? The scribblings of a prisoner? Pared raises all the questions of history and potentiality that any empty building can evoke.