I enjoy a lot of shows at the Soap Factory but I really keep going back with the hope of seeing something I’ll love as much as I loved Andy Ducett’s Why We Do This show in 2012. On September 17 it happened! I loved Preston Drum’s Death Scene. (Fun to see that the show was coordinated by Ducett.) It’s a cardboard recreation of a television set for a hospital show. OK, it’s not built only with cardboard but it looks like it is!
There’s a hospital room complete with hospital bed, TV on the wall, window and medical supplies. Surrounding the room are television filming equipment, a mounted camera, audio controls, lights and a craft service table. It is exactly what you might make with a bunch of old refrigerator boxes if you were creative and had skills. The overall feel is something between caricature and surreal like a soap opera.
It looks specifically like a room at the Mayo Clinic. Although the artist said he’d never been to the Mayo. I guess it looks like all hospital rooms but the specificity born of university make the reminder all the better. And like Dulcett’s work, there’s just something about it that shoot you right into being a kid. It’s the painstaking detail. It’s the fact that you can sit right on the chair or the bed. It’s the fact that you could stage a show there if you could talk your friends into it. It seems as if Drum was able to do that and the video shows on the TV hanging from the wall.
I tried to take my favorite 12 year old to the show last weekend and the gallery was closed – perhaps prepping for the Haunted Basement. I may have to try again as according to the website the show is open until the end of the month.
Mostly Minnesota 