Hello dear friends!
Today I would like to tell you all about my visit to The Mattress Factory, a museum dedicated to the art of installation in the Northside neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
I actually went to the wrong location first because all the streets were closed around the main campus of the Mattress Factory. I had requested a window of 1:30pm (COVID procedure) to arrive and I was supposed to check in at the front desk, but I went to their Monterrey Annex first. The Mattress Factory owns three buildings in the same block, their main campus on Sampsonia Way, their Monterrey Annex on the corner of Monterrey Street, and their Sampsonia Annex, which is pretty much right next door to the main building.
So, I will describe my visit as it went, rather than how it was supposed to go. When I first entered the Monterrey Annex, I walked in on the joy of several taxidermied wild animals having a dinner party: a bear, a porcupine, an owl, and a gray fox, if memory serves. Their table was set with all the good things wild animals such as them would like to eat. On the walls of magenta paint were patterns created with various insects, which were much more fabulous than “patterns of various insects” can describe. In the drawers of card catalogs lined up on shelves at the lower half of the walls, were various tableaus continuing the theme of taxidermy and nature explosion that adorned the walls. Think Joseph Stella on steroids and if he were commissioned to create tableaus for a natural history museum. The installation is called The Museum of Everything (2020) by Jennifer Angus and it is a visual delight that should not be missed. There are other installations in the Monterrey Annex, but they didn’t speak to me as loudly as The Museum of Everything and my favorite ones in the main campus and the Sampsonia Annex.
On to the main building! When you check in, the gift shop is on your right, and through the gift shop is the cafe, which I did not visit and now am sad about it. The gift shop has so many cool things, it was hard to leave without buying anything, but I live in a studio apartment and I just don’t have the room for new acquisitions.
So! They recommend that you ride the elevator to the fourth floor and work your way down on the stairs. Upon entering the fourth floor, you see the installation All is Not Forgotten (2019) by Patrick Robideau. In this installation, you see glimpses of a house as though you were walking through someone’s vague memory. They can’t remember all of it, and the memory exists in shadow, but you can see select fragments. There’s a creepy hallway to walk down and see more glimpses of the memory, but you can’t experience the physicality of it for yourself. Great way to start our tour.
The next installation, you can actually experience in person, live and in living color. The Other Apartment (2019) by Sohrab Kashani and John Rubin is a complete reproduction of Kashani’s apartment in Iran, down to the toy Supermen he has on his bookshelves, his posters on the wall, and his bedcovers. Because of the travel ban, Kashani is unable to visit the USA, so they brought his home to us. Also because of COVID and quarantine, he lives in isolation, so he brought a variety of experts on various topics to him—and us. Through video chats, he learns how to pop and lock, how to sing, and how to practice martial arts. Or, rather his super alter ego does. Very neat. You never think about how the objects in your home tell the story of who you are, but as you selected them to express your interests and personality, of course they do.
On the third floor, the wonderful sculptor Yayoi Kusama has two connecting installations, Repetitive Vision (1996) and Infinity Dots Mirrored Room (1996). Both super fun as you can see yourself in the mirrors, and as we all enjoy looking at our reflections like little birds, very enjoyable. But the coolest part is that both installations and figures—and you—seem to go on forever, obliterating your reality and your special identity into many realities and identities. According to the artist (from the Mattress Factory’s website), “A mirror is a device which obliterates everything including myself and others in the light of another world or a gallant apparatus which creates nothingness.” Not to disagree with the artist’s original intentions, but I don’t feel nothingness; I feel that there are many of me in other dimensions doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. We’re all visiting the Infinity Dots Mirrored Room in all of our dimensions, which I think is a really cool feeling. It’s like, “Hey to all of the me’s that I can see right now. We’re doing our art admiration thing and enjoying ourselves. Carry on!”
I will now skip to the Sampsonia Annex, which had three floors dedicated to A Second Home (2016) by Dennis Maher. I sadly (or maybe not sadly, since I was able to experience it with an open mind) missed the placard at the beginning describing the artist’s intention due to it being behind a door. However, I went into the installation on the first floor, and it was an over the top explosion of architectural details like peaks of roofs, or stairs, or columns or so many other things I can’t even name them! The first floor kinda left me cold. I’m not that into architecture. But I do appreciate over-the-top. The second floor, however, had more architectural explosion, and also a piano soundtrack to accompany the objects of home piled on top of one another as you wove your way through the floor to the second floor. The piano soundtrack felt…a little off. When I reached the third floor, the off quality of the piano combined with the projections to create a feeling of unease. In one of the rooms a recording of a person repeating a series of words including “home” and “mom” added to the atmosphere of general uneasiness. At this point I was impressed because I was actually feeling the atmosphere and finally understanding what was behind all the architectural fragments covering every surface available.
Then I exited through a black curtain to a stairwell and the crisp fall air. I did go back in and read the placard describing the piece. (From the placard) “A Second Home transforms the Mattress Factory row house at 516 Sampsonia Way into a mysterious wonderland that cleaves, intermingles, and collages a house’s physical and metaphysical counterparts.” If I see one more storyline in a show or movie about how someone doesn’t want to leave their home that’s in the path of impending destruction and doom because it’s their HOME, I will set myself on fire. (Arrested Development reference.) But I see where the storyline comes from, and where Maher gets his metaphysical quality for A Second Home. A home is more than its parts. Your home is your sacred space where you rest your head, the place where you can really be you because you and your home are just for you and your family. Full of love—or conflict. It absorbs your energy and gives you energy. It’s also the thing that gets haunted when you die a tragic death. Is the haunting because you died tragically, or is it because you don’t want to leave your home or have anyone else moving in?
That concludes my adventure for today. I didn’t realize it at the time, but of course the theme that unites most of the installations is the concept of home. Duh. I can’t stress how cool The Mattress Factory is enough. Totally worth the price of admission tenfold. If you have a chance to visit the Pittsburgh area, it would be a shame to miss it! You can learn more about The Mattress Factory here .
Take care of yourself, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.