Jennifer Marman:  Lives and works in Toronto, Ontario
Daniel Borins:  Lives and works in Toronto, Ontario

Conceptual provocateurs Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins combine elements of design, consumer culture, art history, philosophy, and politics into interventionist “situations” in the public sphere.  In Sit You, their first outdoor installation, consists of a matching rainbow-striped park bench and mechanized billboard installed on the Albright-Knox’s Elmwood Avenue lawn.  Seen in the context of the museum’s traditional modernist sculptures on the lawn as well as by extension the colorful Abstract masterworks hanging in the interior galleries, the work enters into direct dialogue with the Gallery’s history of collecting and supporting modernist abstraction while posing a humorous critique of the urban functionality of the Elmwood Avenue bus stop nearby.  At the same time, the work invites a playful Beckettian public participation, as those who pass by are invited to sit on the bench and witness the kinetic movement of the billboard while waiting for a bus that never arrives.

On view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

To hear the artist’s audio statement, click the audio player below: