Alexandra Kleiman
Few artists use obscure materials such as Zebra Cakes, fish tanks, and keychains with such lyrical efficacy as the Baltimore-based duo DUOX, a collaboration between Malcolm Lomax and Daniel Wickerham. Their installations often aim to implicate viewers through movement or interaction.
In 2010, DUOX self-organized their Museum of Modern Twink at a makeshift art venue in Baltimore, participating in the city’s Pride festival. The show featured logos, images of dismembered body parts, floral cushions, magazines, and microphones into which visitors could speak, among other objects. Altogether, the installation itself and the artists’ decision to title it as such create a form of institutional critique both in terms of what gets to be shown in an institution as well as how.
Wickerham explains, “We are interested in the individual, the possibilities of one’s life, and finding new paths. So the work is never going to be just an example of us figuring that out, it will be more inclusive.”
DUOX has a solo show opening at Artists Space in New York on Saturday. In true form, the artists and gallery put forth a creative yet nebulous yet highly intriguing press release only offering a letter of resignation from DUOX’s “Lead Surrogate.” DUOX (here, for Larkin) aims to mimic a workers’ recreation room by including baby cribs, medical scrubs, a work table with a water cooler, and cup holders attached to stands in their installation—a space meant to “customize your strife.”
DUOX, Debra, 2011. Courtesy Artists Space.
