Last night Abigail DeVille — whose post-apocalyptic environments were among the highlights of the New Museum’s “Ungovernables” triennial and Armory Week’s hotel art fair The Dependent, and who was recently shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize — offered a work-in-progress preview of her latest installation at Recess’s Red Hook outpost in Dustin Yellin’s enormous art space The Intercourse, where she is currently an artist-in-residence.
DeVille has been working on the new environment, titled “Invisible Men,” since May 30 and will remain in residence at Recess through the end of July. Already the installation features many of the hallmarks of her work, from billowing trash bags and tarps, to old records, magazines, and smashed picture frames.
Near the center of the installation the lower half of a cross-legged mannequin sits with a garbage bag full of fake flowers and cups in place of a torso, as if to further emphasize the post-human and post-nature qualities of the work. On the sloping wall behind the solitary figure old paintings in elaborate oval frames hang alongside mementos like old magazines and notebooks, and a Barbara Streisand box set. Assembled from DeVille’s own objects and materials collected on the streets if the Bronx, the piece is intended to highlight the plight of New York’s “Invisible Men” — that is, its growing homeless population.
Nestled on the massive second-floor mezzanine, DeVille’s workspace is just one of several studios. Ambitious in scale as her installation is, it still looks tiny in the vast Intercourse space.
— Benjamin Sutton