State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now Lecture by Jonathan Schipper

Many of the works in State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now will compel guests to return time and again, but only one work will self-destruct with each visit. Slow Room, an installation by Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Schipper, presents an archetypal and nostalgic living room filled with a familiar arrangement of furniture and domestic objects. The familiarity is quickly interrupted, however, by the uncanny cascade of thin, white lines extending from each object and terminating into a hole at the back wall. These cables lead to a hidden winch mechanism programmed by the artist to pull the objects into it by one inch each day, eventually destroying the entire room by the end of the exhibition.