Isabel Mallet

In Practice, SculptureCenter, 2023

Audio description of exhibition:

Three stones inhabit this room, all formed hundreds of millions of years ago, deep underground, then dragged or pushed to the surface through tectonic activity and subsequent erosion.

They were extracted from three quarries still in operation, all of which have historically supplied stone for the buildings of New York City.

These stones endure throughout the city: underneath our feet in public spaces, in universities and train stations, as pedestals for monuments, coping on façades, benches and blockades, pillars, curb stones, gravestones, bridge foundations.

A lighting system illuminates the ground, faulty gallery lights dismantled and rewired with “barn lights”, LED panels connected to light sensors. When installed outside, they turn on at dusk, and turn off at dawn, like streetlights. When installed in groups or in a small space, the lights affect each other, turning on and off in a random pattern, entering a feedback loop.

A Datura Wrightii (moonflower) plant blooms at night, the spiralled bud slowly unfurling along five rays of radial symmetry into a trumpet shaped flower. Each flower blooms only once, lasts one night, and if it is pollinated, droops and turns into a spiny seedpod hidden underneath the leaves.

A spell doesn’t need a name. A binding to and/or a release from ___ . Incantation as rhythmic intensification of the present (devouring itself). A breath forming volume and shape – conjuring the unspoken into the world for an instant (repeating).

With thanks to:

Stony Creek Quarry and Darrell Petit

Rock of Ages Quarry and Rob Boulanger, Marco Parent and Jonathan Houghton

Vermont Verde Serpentine Quarry and Tom Fabbioli, Peter Fabbioli and Mary-Margaret Fabbioli, also for the use of their shop and tools