Inside a rectangular vitrine, a tiered plastic structure resembles an architectural model of a dilapidated city or crumbling forest. Each of its platforms teems with sagging vertical shapes, suggesting sci-fi skyscrapers or ghostly trees in various states of decay. A dull, gray-white fuzz covers both the vertical shapes and the platforms on which they stand, giving the whole structure a lumpy and haggard appearance. The fuzz is actually mycelia growing from yogurt that artist Silas Inoue spread on the artwork, “Infrastructure” (2022), to cultivate fungi. A bronze respiratory filter, evoking a masked frog, sits atop the vitrine to provide the fungal mold with oxygen and to prevent its spores from escaping into the room.

Elsewhere in Night Bloom Central, the artist’s brooding exhibition at Ulterior Gallery, hang two examples of what Inoue calls “mold paintings.” Cryptically titled “.” and “:” (both 2022), each artwork is composed of mycelia growing from yogurt spread on a wooden panel. The works’ downy surfaces and mottled, black-and-white patterns summon images of an interior designer for a big box store who decided to misbehave. The designer, in this case, is the fungal mold, raising questions about where agency resides when an artist creates the aleatory conditions for non-human organisms to produce objects intended for human aesthetic appreciation. The mold paintings’ abstractions appear less decrepit than the Infrastructure series’ droopy, quasi-figurative contents; the contrast highlights how context can determine whether humans perceive mold as a thriving organism or a sign of decay.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.