mixed greens | magazine | Living With Installation Art

The most immediate demand that installation art makes is for space. Ong owns a piece, Karen Kilimnick’s Small Pox, he hadn’t seen installed since he bought it in a gallery 10 years ago. In his bureau he has a small yellow envelope marked “Kilimnick, Small Pox.” The envelope holds a powder puff, a small tub of talcum powder, a smaller envelope containing small black cutout shapes, and a tube of red paint. The idea is that you spread the powder on the floor, put the powder puff on top of it, scatter the black pieces around, and streak some red paint on the wall.

Ong has never had Kilimnick execute the piece, for several reasons. The main one is conservation—a work that consists mainly of powder and tiny black dots could be lost in a domestic setting—and he would have to pick it up and have it reinstalled every time he vacuumed. The other is the issue of embarrassment: After buying the piece, he realized the artist might be less than impressed with the small confines in which he wanted to place the work. His safety valve, spacewise, is his parents’ house in Oakland. Ong, an architect, designed a home for them after their old residence was destroyed in an earthquake. He even tranferred Noland’s Bloody Mess there, to a space large enough so that no one had to worry about tripping over it in the way to the kitchen.

The actual moment of installation is clearly part of the fun for some collectors. The artist often comes to their homes, and in rare moments the collector can even become something of a collaborator by suggesting how a work might be displayed. This happened to Joe Barron, a New York collector who bought a video projection piece by Peter Sarkisian, Roadside Series #2, The Isolate. One detail of the work, which consists of a video projection from the ceiling onto a suitcase with a hat resting on it, was invented during the installation. Sarkisian had planned to have the suitcase and hat on a plain white pedestal, but Barron suggested setting it on a steamer trunk filled with rarely used clothes. Sarkisian loved the idea.