Entanglements

Milky, 2023, by Matt King. Steel, Ultracal, cookie jar, spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), wire, mylar, magnet, paper, paint, 20″ x 18″ x 83″.
Holding Tomorrow, 2023, by Matt King. Ultracal, wire, corn (Triple Crown Yellow Hybrid), pole beans (Kentucky Wonder), 17″ x 17″ x 64″.
Gray’s Tower, 2023, by Matt King. Concrete, wire, spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), bush beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), paint, 30″ x 30″ x 61″.
Brownout, 2023, by Matt King. Ultracal, wire, spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), paint, 74″ x 30″ x 16″.

Connections between ambition and appetite, unchecked growth and ruin, hunger and sustainability. These are sculptures in the form of architectural fragments, structures that support the live growth of food crops such as wheat, corn, and beans. Over the course of a growing season the gypsum-based structures and plants become enmeshed, dried out – roots and all. They point to what anthropologist Anna Tsing calls “more-than-human entanglements,” where organic growth and cultural artifacts become hybridized and unruly.