by Emma Riva / cover image by Blaine Siegel
Maybe you remember the $120,000 Art Basel banana. If you don’t have the same art world brain poisoning I do and this reference means nothing, don’t worry, it’s what it sounds like. Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped a banana to the wall of Galerie Perrotin’s booth at 2019 Art Basel Miami Beach. It was entitled Comedian and it cost $120,000. Three people purchased it. (Two editions). Interactive artwork has a long history, a more conceptually resonant example being Felix Gonzales Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a pile of candy in the weight of the artist’s partner dying of AIDS. Artwork like that often winds up as the butt of the joke, but it brings to mind questions of how staging something gives us the idea that it’s “art” or not. That label then changes how we engage with it.
When I walked into Blaine Siegel’s group exhibition at Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, You’re Doing It Wrong, I found myself in that same conundrum. Is this art?
The staging of the beer can, the plates, and the lavender in the cake on top of the exact same pedestal as the rest of the artwork made me think it was. The cuts of the cake looked so precise. It also wasn’t obviously at the front of the space. Laurie Trok’s recent exhibition Grief Cake had me in the mindset that cake could be art, maybe. I looked around at the other exhibitiongoers. For context, Derek Reese’s Lord Give Us Our Daily Bread, which greets you at the gallery’s front, is a staging of a smashed table with pieces of bread. That one is art and not to eat. So was the piece directly next to the cake, an Andrew Allison piece using Count Chocula cereal. Also art and not to eat. So what was this cake?
This was, in fact, to eat, not stanchioned-off artwork. It was delicious–courtesy of Andrew Allison, a baker as well as artist. This cake anecdote highlights how viewing You’re Doing It Wrong, a show about the boundaries of what’s “right” and “wrong” in artmaking, managed to be not just an in-and-out gallery visit but an experience. Everything was a little off-kilter and bizarre, in the best way. The only utensil for the cake was a small pick (pictured in the cup in the first image). Having to eat with that made me consume the cake slowly and really enjoy it. It also made for conversation–artist colleague Mike Kelly (Petrichor deep cut from our very first post, Kelly is the creator of the Pittsburgh puddles that so entranced me) described it as a “disappointing compromise between a chopstick and a fork” as we laughed over attempts to eat it.
The show chose not to use wall text or labels and instead provided a numbered map of the space with the names of each piece. That made for a game of I-Spy that really made me have to think about what I was looking at. Every few minutes I was asking “Wait, is this #26?” I have to admit that for the first little bit, this frustrated me, but as I spent more time in the gallery, I accepted it as part of the experience. The lack of wall labels forced me not to simply schmooze and look and take photos but to actually engage and be curious. I’m always impressed when something makes me change my mind. I was prepared to write a sentence calling the layout choice a setback, but sitting with it made me appreciate it.
Siegel told me that much of his artwork prior to developing this concept was more about social engagement and less about studio practice. The work he made for You’re Doing It Wrong put him back in the studio, and each of his pieces has a sense of renewal, joy, and exploratory curiosity to it. There was a joy and whimsy to the whole thing. It’s zany and eclectic without being overly cute or sacrificing seriousness. Along with Siegel, You’re Doing It Wrong features the work of Andrew Allison, Barbara Weissberger, Derek Reese, and Leah Patgorski. Andrew Allison’s pieces all being multimedia and relatively small meant that he occupied much of the show’s wall space, where Reese’s larger installations floated in the center.
A highlight from Weissberger was As They Rode Along the Edge, an ominous red-and-magenta textile work reminiscent of some of Andy Warhol’s knife screenprints. Another thing the lack of wall labels contributed was having to guess who made what, which takes away or reveals some of the assumptions you have about an artist. When I first saw this piece, I couldn’t tell which number it was and from the pattern of rectangles on the bottom thought it might be Leah Patgorski’s. It made me see some of the commonalities between the two artists’ work I might not have otherwise identified.
Leah Patgorski’s work shines in any context, but it fit right to Siegel’s concept with its playfulness and malleability. Something I’ve always admired in Patgorski’s art is the free-floating, unconfined feeling she achieves with her shapes. They occupy space but are never trapped by them. I’m always excited to see her in an exhibition. Cloak for Trapping of June Beetles, reminiscent of the “nets” from her 2023 Union Hall exhibition sat an exposed brick wall. That placement allowed me to see new shapes in it as light and shadow interspersed with its form.
Though You’re Doing It Wrong is thought-provoking and interesting and does take itself seriously, part of what made it work was just that it was fun. “Play” gets thrown around a lot as a buzzword in art-speak, but a mark of a good opening is that people had a good time. At AAP’s studios, nobody seemed to want to leave. People were exuberantly taking pictures and chatting even as the booze ran out. People were still eating the cake even when there were no chopstick-fork utensils left. Clearly, Siegel is doing something right.
You’re Doing It Wrong is open through July 26 at Ice House Studios (100 43rd Street) in Lawrenceville.
PETRICHOR 
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