Clare Koury
Bio: Clare Koury is an artist from Kentucky living in New York City.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: A structure with a bad foundation will rot from the inside out. It happens slowly, sinking and sloping gradually enough to escape detection. Entropy in slow motion doesn’t look like anything.
Over time you may notice that one side of your room is lower than the other. Contractors call it “differential movement.” Its effect ripples throughout the whole structure and all its attachments. Walls sigh for years in quiet expansion and contraction until finally they heave and bulge then buckle in ecstatic collapse.
Sometimes it only takes a huff and puff.
The house will find other ways to kill you.
Popcorn ceilings were a popular way for builders to hide imperfections and they almost always contain asbestos. It’s fireproof and an excellent insulator and until 1973 we all agreed that it belonged in our piping, insulation, electrical equipment, walls and floors. You’ll find it in almost any house built before 1980. You’ll find it in the telltale vinyl tiling of Columbia University buildings if you peel back enough annual layers of latex floor paint. It’s only dangerous when disturbed.
You can imagine a day in the not so distant future where you’re surrounded by skeletons of systems that no longer serve you, stepping over and around the vestiges of something awful in the interest of your own self preservation. The suburb is a relic of a bygone era, a problem left for urban planners to retrofit. The avenues through which your own folly and cruelty find expression and meaning are also artifacts, paved over centuries of repetition and adaptation.
Usually the choice between preservation and demolition will come down to cost.
L to R: An Abundance of Wheat and More Corn Than the Farmers Can Dispose Of (8" x 254" x 3.5", Honda side sills, Mountain Dew, chewing gum, 2021); Pyre (19'6" x 20" x 20", Steel, straw, spray on fireproofing, 2021)
