A former Department Store's display windows have been the site for passers by to view this area's contemporary art for the past two years. The current exhibition, DORMANCY, challenges this audience to experience installation and performance art.
The exhibition was instigated by an invitation to visual artist Bill Botzow. Botzow's work has taken many different forms over the years. As a painter and a sculptor who works on site-specific installations and collaborations with multi media artists, his inspiration comes from reflection on the circumstances surrounding real places. He gathers the raw materials from those surroundings as well.
DORMANCY, a site specific collaboration, evolved to include the characteristics of the New England winter, the vacant, former department store that houses the Annex Gallery and the apparent state of downtown Pittsfield. An installation and several performances were scheduled.
A rather time lapse view of dormancy ensued as Botzow and dancer Meg Cottam began the installation. Having placed the large 12 foot long bale figure in a recumbent pose, Botzow began tracing and sculpting the remaining figures.
In a simultaneous performance, Cottam started by pushing and prodding the initial figure. As time went on her manipulations fell to movements as one in sleep. Viewers became witness to development and instigation and their reactions were woven into the installation as photographer Kevin Bubriski videotaped them from the inside and from the street.
Four sleeping figures, a work suit and a whisk broom remained after the initial performance and alone had the capacity to echo the notion of quiescence and amplify the present local conditions.
Returning almost four weeks later, the artists paid a dollar to passers by for allowing them to trace their figures onto a plastic sheet that stretched along the sidewalk (in forty degree weather, no less). These silhouettes were later suspended in the windows over the sculptures and even more were traced onto the glass itself to give the suggestion of resurrection, perhaps, or as the suggestion of a once bustling area.
Bubriski, in the meantime had photographed stills from the initial performance video and the color prints were placed around the window's edge as the second performance came to an end. The photographs being the only color in an otherwise sparse display, became the optimism which frames the dreariness. There are actual people in this scene now and some with tremendous expressions of query and interest.
On March 2nd DORMANCY will be taken down as its' final performance. Perhaps as the artists imply, and one living in this city wishes, the suspended process (of dormancy) capable of action, will in fact awaken.
J.M. Carney, art writer and curator, directs the Berkshire Artisans Annex Gallery.