In a brief aside on p. 216, the profiled sculptor Todd Slaughter mentions a work he did that involved sculpting a couch out of salt and placing it in a steam room so that it would decompose over the course of the show. I though this was a fantastic idea, so I set out to see if I could find any info about the work (the text did not include the name).
While the profile section was mostly about unconventional materials (i.e. the salt), what was most interesting to me was the idea that the non-repeatable moments in time of the decomposition itself were the artwork. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been so surprised that photos of the work, titled Comfort Zone from 1993, would be so hard to find.
Here's a statement from the Revolution-Evolution show & a few images from the artist's webpage:
“The sculptures of Todd Slaughter in this exhibition will destroy themselves while they are on display. Their demise will occur not because of a sudden cataclysm but rather through a gradual, relentless process of disintegration. Each work sets two elements in opposition, one standing for the human body and the other representing the external forces that form our environment. These may be natural, societal or psychological ones; they are represented by abstract geometric forms such as spheres or cylinders that defy specific associations. Two types of relationships are possible between the two elements: one may prove to be the stronger and enduree, but more frequently they destroy each other."
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