Todd Pavlisko

Working in a variety of media, Todd Pavlisko subversively mines the inner workings of the “institution”– be it cultural, social, or corporate. In 2004, Pavlisko exhibited Fountain, an industrial drinking fountain dispensing red wine. Then, in 2007, he built an elaborate contraption that produced a mysterious leak through a small hole in a gallery’s ceiling support beam. Using wine as the dripping fluid, Pavlisko continued an ongoing lexicon regarding the stereotypical staples surrounding the institution of art and the art market. Likewise, in the same exhibition, an assisted readymade consisting of gold-plated loose change lied serendipitously on the floor. The subtly altered coins are, in their natural state, an exact anthology of all the money the artist found in a year’s time. On more metaphoric terms and by way of the incongruous surface treatment, broader themes of value, worth, and stability can easily be read into this unassuming sculpture and his practice more generally.

Pavlisko has had a solo exhibition at Cincinnati Art Museum, and recent solo-exhibitions include University Hall Gallery of University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, Samsøñ, Boston, MA,Robert Miller Gallery, New York City, NY. He was included in the 2013 Armory Focus: U.S.A. Centennial Exhibition, curated by Eric Shiner, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum. He has participated in group-exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Art and Design, New York, the Bass Museum, Miami, FL, the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA. Performance is in integral part of his practice and Pavlisko has performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, MOCA Cleveland, and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, as well as Het West-Indisch Huis in Amsterdam.

Courtesy of Monique Meloche