Studio Art professor Jeff Williams has completed a massive installation, 17,000 ft² of Shade at Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR), an artist residency program building awareness about sustainability through art in Philadelphia. During his time as a former resident artist for RAIR in 2016, Williams’ utilized RAIR’s heavy equipment and waste materials creating various sculptures made out of car hoods and concrete barrier blocks.
“[I’m] taking things that most of society considers garbage, and thinking about the lived history of that thing… how it has cycled around the country of globe to get to this particular designation as waste,” said Williams about his 2016 residency with RAIR.
William’s current exhibition 17,000 ft² of Shade is on view from September 29 through October 7, 2018 at Revolution Recovery, a construction waste recycling facility and was the first piece of artwork displayed at the site. The large scale installation is actually 17,000 square feet of shade inside the Revolution Recovery facility, replete with massive steel beams, concrete and thin chromatic lines made from rope. Williams said the rope and the steel “optically connect… visually merging rusted steel with neon yellow rope. The lines both delineate and confuse, they are in motion, through their multiple viewpoints in space, marking interesting and distinct moments in time.”
17,000 ft² of Shade follows a group show, Close Quarters, organized by the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) this past July. Featuring artists from eight different galleries, Close Quarters took place off-site at a historic Colonial Revival house on Governors Island. Other artists included Rainer Ganahl (Kai Matsumiya), Fabienne Lasserre (Safe Gallery), Michael Mahalchick (CANADA), Jerry the Marble Faun (SITUATIONS), Hayley Martell (Signal), Asif Mian (False Flag), Devin N. Morris (Signal), Elliott Jamal Robbins (Kai Matsumiya) and Johanna Unzueta (Proyectos Ultravioleta).