Olivia Erlanger at What Pipeline @ Knight Arts Blog
“I had been looking around these ideas of systemic crisis, global financial crisis, which is what I came of age in,” said artist Olivia Erlanger during a conversation about “The Oily Actor.” This new body of work was presented at What Pipeline, a Knight Arts grantee in Detroit. “It was the most prominent dialogue in the house that I grew up in… Every dinner table conversation was about the economy, money and how everything is an illusion.”
“The Oily Actor,” which was on display through March 26 at What Pipeline’s unassuming gallery space off Vernor Highway, included an ambient sound piece and a floor installation, but focused primarily on three wall pieces that Erlanger refers to as “rafts.” Erlanger’s work draws together an incredibly dense array of source material, processing a prodigious reading list that includes Karl Marx, experimental science fiction writer Mark von Schlegell (“Raft for the Doll in Glass” is named for a character in his novel “Sundogz”) and philosopher Timothy Morton–as well as an equally vast range of physical materials.