“Process is what keeps a thing alive, one thing leads to another. One has to do more to it – intensify color, play with material and scale, subject the form of gravity, make it collide with another object, turn it upside down or bury it halfway to the ground – so that it opens up multiple associations”

It gets so boring, the mundane: flower pots, keys, garden hoses–we are so immune to the world around us, we forget how much of a work of art they are in and of themselves. Which is why I really loved the joint exhibition Things Around the House at Paula Cooper gallery featuring Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen.

Walking in, like any gallery space, one is surrounded by whiteness filled with what would normally seem like ordinary inanimate objects, but as you come closer you can see the fine detail Oldenburg and Van Bruggen put into their works to make it simultaneously feel like you are out in the real world while still inside a small gallery in the city.

Things Around the House will be on display through December 12th at Paula Cooper (534 W. 21st Street in Chelsea).