that's Laurie Parsons.
Reflection and associations through a bulleted list.
emerged in the 80s
doesn't make anything
walks in natural and urban areas where she collects found objects
lives with the objects in her studio
exhibits those objects
do objects have a presence?
Field of Rubble, 1988: covers the floor of the gallery with rubble from the Hudson River
the outside inside, a gesture towards conflation, real/unreal, art/life
1989: someone buys everything from one of her shows intending to keep the installation together
someone buys a pink bathroom sink collected from the street
new rule: nothing is for sale
how can people buy something that previously lived on the streets?
has a show consisting of freshly painted walls and modified lighting
no name, no opening, no closing dates on the exhibition card
at some point, the show is gone from her bio
it just felt right
has an idea for a live stream from her bedroom/studio, projected into the gallery
continues to conflate the gallery and the real blurring the boundaries between art and life, this time with people
1991, Germany: moves into the exhibition space with some belongings and works in a local psychiatric hospital
who is this person living in the gallery? even general folks walk into the gallery for the first time
talks to anyone who comes in, doesn't speak much German
closing party, the people of Rottweil turn up in large numbers, after all, she names herself, the curator and Rottweiler Bürger (the people of Bürger) on the event card
authorship, social engagement, audience collaboration, the artist is present, but not performance like Marina Abramovi?
displays a stack of bills and people take it, the security guards do nothing, it's a group show and it's called The Big Nothing (1992), I'm guessing hers was the most successful piece given that it dematerialized
the audience---central to the work, the dematerialization of the art object (read Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 by Lucy Lippard, 1973)
Félix González-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991, 175lb of candies
Torres invites the audience to take a candy, a conceptual representation of a life disappearing (AIDS), 175lbs, the average weight of an adult male; Parsons is mischievous, tempting the audience, implicating the audience in the work, is it a statement about art as object? what else? let's get a coffee and discuss
1992: proposes that the security guards and admission staff at The New Museum talk about the work to visitors, a no-no prior to this
develops a program enabling security and admission staff to meet the artists, do studio visits
social engagement, role reversal, disruption of the gallery system
1994: invited to submit a proposal for a sculpture park in Germany, rejected for being too fantastical, abstract, and insubstantial, it would have been a work of the imagination
1994: leaves the art world, continues personal writing (collects works and phrases), performs social work (as in, she actually works in the field, it's not a performance piece)
done
except that in 2010, apparently the pink bathroom sink is displayed at Zwirner's in New York, I say apparently because it is mentioned in Herbert's book Tell Them I Said No, but Zwirner's website displays no record of the show; is this Parsons at work? one of her rules?
the art world won't leave her be
2017: one of her pieces (Troubled) is shown in the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva
if she returns it probably won't be by choice
P.S. Laurie Parsons does not have a Wikipedia entry. According to Google, she was born in 1959 in Mount Kisco, New York and is listed as being a social worker.
The bulleted list above was drawn from these sources:
Nickas, Bob, 2021. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO: LAURIE PARSONS. [online] Artforum.com. Available at: <https://www.artforum.com/print/200304/whatever-happened-to-laurie-parsons-4510> [Accessed 27 July 2021]. This online article cited above first appeared in the 2013 print version of Artforum.
Herbert, Martin. Tell Them i Said No. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.