Sun Dried Boys, 2009

Sun Dried Boys (Red Pepper Found Installation), Paul Clay, 2009

Presented in conjunction with (but not associated with), the 2009 Incheon Women Artists Biennale, Incheon Korea.

Multimedia work. Text description, digital photos of storefront installation with red paper-covered windows, television set, red plastic wash basin, flattened cardboard box, two black nets, drying red peppers. Dimensions variable.

Project Description:

Sun Dried Boys starts with a “found installation” or readymade in the form of something already existing, that looks for all the world like an art installation.

The space is photographed and then explicated at length, putting the “installation” in context within the contemporary art scene. The actual artwork consists of the photographs and the text in the form of a fictional “Project Description”. In one way such a work could simply be read as prankster art, but the real intent is to use the found space as a lens to view the art context of which the installation is supposedly a part.

Sun Dried Boys thus explores the social network around the 2009 Incheon Women Artists Biennale, acknowledges folk art and undervalued women’s practices, rips-off or riffs-on, the exploration of other artists work during the exhibit, and acknowledges the gendered power structures that still exist in society and in the contemporary art scene.

The artwork can be viewed at the following url:

http://sundriedboys.blogspot.com/