{"id":16596,"date":"2025-10-14T20:32:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/beautiful-trash-art-and-sustainability-at-pace-and-lehmann-maupin\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T20:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:32:10","slug":"beautiful-trash-art-and-sustainability-at-pace-and-lehmann-maupin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/beautiful-trash-art-and-sustainability-at-pace-and-lehmann-maupin\/","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Trash: Art and Sustainability at Pace and Lehmann Maupin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Tom Friedman, Detritus<\/em>, 2025. Today\u2019s artists are metabolizing trash, corrosion and entropy into new forms of sustainability. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trash is no longer just a byproduct\u2014it\u2019s a proposition. As the ecological crisis deepens, the art world\u2014traditionally enmeshed in systems of extraction and spectacle\u2014is increasingly poised to make a meaningful bid into sustainability. And a growing number of artists are rejecting clean aesthetics and redemptive narratives in favor of something murkier: entropy, mutation, memory. Waste, once a critique, is now the material and the message<\/span>.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n<\/section>\n

Two New York exhibitions embody this shift: Max Hooper Schneider<\/a>\u2019s \u201cScavenger\u201d at Pace\u2019s 125 Newbury and Tom Friedman<\/a>\u2019s \u201cDetritus\u201d at Lehmann Maupin.<\/span> The works could not look more different, but both artists treat the discarded not as something to erase, but as something to engage with. Together, these exhibitions highlight the potential for the art world to make a meaningful bid into the sustainability space. Where the focus isn\u2019t cleaning up the mess, but instead showing us how to live inside it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Survival through mutation: corrosion, collapse and hybrid worlds in Max Hooper Schneider\u2019s \u201cScavenger\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n

If there\u2019s a poster child for post-apocalyptic materialism, it might be Max Hooper Schneider. \u201cScavenger\u201d marks his New York solo debut, presenting a provocative vision of sustainability that refuses redemption or purity. Inside Pace\u2019s Tribeca space, the exhibition unfolds as a sprawling pseudo-laboratory of future, present and past: video geodes of the L.A. fires<\/span>, train tracks made of teeth, a<\/span> melting gargantuan Oreo<\/span>, <\/b>copper-coated toys and<\/span> mutated barnacles. This is no fantasy of renewal. It\u2019s corrosion-as-creativity where speculative ecosystems are both grotesque and regenerative.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than offer solutions, Schneider confronts the mess as material and metaphor, reminding us that there is \u201cno plot,\u201d only a \u201cset of conditions.\u201d His liminal sculptures\u2014part diorama, part dystopian coral reef\u2014visualize what he calls <\/span>trans-habitats<\/span>: zones of contaminated regeneration where synthetic and organic, human and nonhuman, collapse into one another. Mutation becomes not merely an aesthetic, but a force: where, he tells Observer, the discarded and corroded \u201cregain life-giving agency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Schneider\u2019s practice of \u201cpainting with trash\u201d mirrors the systems he highlights. He forages globally\u2014scrapyards, estate sales, beach parking lots, bio-labs, eBay\u2014and recombines waste into works that recall both geological strata and technological ruin. His objects are intentionally unstable, alive with entropy: his copper sculptures, shifting in patina, behave like \u201ca mycelial network or mushroom colony,\u201d organisms of decay and potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Installation\"Installation
Installation of \u201cMax Hooper Schneider: Scavenger\u201d at 125 Newbury. The art world\u2019s newest form of renewal is learning to live with the debris. Photography courtesy Peter Clough and 125 Newbury<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Echoing the myth of the golem\u2014creatures formed from clay to serve as protectors\u2014his hybrid forms operate not as warnings but as proposals, suggesting that if art is to engage sustainability meaningfully, it must do more than reflect the world\u2019s waste. It must metabolize, commune and cohabit with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trash as memory: compression, control and the demand for attention in Tom Friedman\u2019s \u201cDetritus\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n

If Schneider builds ecological fever dreams, Tom Friedman\u2019s \u201cDetritus\u201d is an eye bath of compression: minimalist, formal, psychologically charged. Long associated with sustainability and uncanny material transformation, Friedman returns to New York with a painting show, and hints he may never reverse that shift.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where his sculptural work once twisted, bent or stretched materials, here he turns to a Sargent-like portraiture of the discarded. Trash becomes image: not merely what we throw away, but what we remember. Each painting begins with discarded fragments from his personal archive\u2014offcuts, wrappers, scraps\u2014carefully arranged, photographed and re-rendered in acrylic. The results hover between trompe l\u2019oeil realism and atmospheric abstraction, forms that oscillate between crystallization and dissolution into the void. There is a palpable tension between control and entropy, seeing and knowing.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Friedman, the discarded is never meaningless\u2014it carries memory: \u201cSomething that has been discarded has history,\u201d he tells Observer. \u201cIt\u2019s gone through process\u2026 garbage is familiar. It\u2019s from our memory. It\u2019s a doorway.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cDetritus,\u201d trash becomes more than residue; it becomes a vessel of accumulated time, charged with presence. These paintings are \u201ccompressions\u201d of experience\u2014\u201czip-files,\u201d he calls them. Memory functions like the biosphere: layered, interdependent, tenuous. What we forget\u2014or choose to discard\u2014still lingers, shaping the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe art world is kind of going through a sugar crash right now,\u201d Friedman notes. His practice resists that volatility. Approaching 60, having left behind destructive habits like smoking, Friedman positions this body of work as part of a broader meditation on sustainability\u2014not only ecological but psychological, emotional and cultural. The challenge is in remaining equable in a society addicted to \u201cmanic reward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be on the edge of infinity,\u201d he says. In \u201cDetritus,\u201d Friedman invites us to stay with the mess, to recognize its textures and rhythms, and ourselves within it. Memory, like ecology, is a system we inhabit and cannot discard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trash as method: reconfiguration over restoration\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n

What unites Schneider and Friedman is less their materials than their shared rejection of purity as a sustainability ideal. Both reside in disorder, embracing contamination as fact and inviting cohabitation with it. This sensibility is increasingly visible across contemporary art. El Anatsui<\/a> transforms aluminum waste into monumental textiles; Kelly Jazvac<\/a> works with \u2018plastiglomerates\u2019\u2014plastic-rock hybrids formed on beaches; Torkwase Dyson<\/a> builds abstract infrastructures from climate and racial violence\u2019s residues. Jessi Reaves<\/a> repurposes thrifted upholstery and industrial offcuts into sculptures that resist tidy function but insist on presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Together, these artists forge a regenerative imagination. This isn\u2019t art about sustainability. It\u2019s art as sustainability: reconfiguration over restoration<\/span>,<\/b> entanglement over erasure. <\/span>As artists grapple with waste in concept and form, the larger art ecosystem is playing catch-up. The gallery and fair circuit has long relied on <\/span>carbon-heavy logistics<\/span><\/a>: air freight, disposable booth builds, endless spectacle. But cracks are forming in that model.<\/span><\/p>\n

Independent spaces often lead this shift. At Del Vaz Projects<\/span> in Los Angeles, sustainability is not a box to check, but a way of working: \u201cSustainability less as a fixed goal and more as a continuous practice of listening\u2014reactivating materials, ideas, and histories instead of consuming them,\u201d a Del Vaz Projects representative tells Observer. <\/span>This model resists extractive cycles and promotes maintenance and reuse over spectacle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Institutional practices are evolving as well. At UC San Diego, chief campus curator Jessica Berlanga Taylor<\/span> approaches commissioning through a framework of ecological accountability: \u201cWe don\u2019t treat sustainability just as a theme, but as a design and stewardship brief\u2014starting with what\u2019s already in our ecosystems, favoring reversible assemblies, end-of-life planning, and transparency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, big galleries are getting serious. Members of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC)<\/span>\u2014including Pace Gallery<\/span>, <\/b>Lehmann Maupin, Lisson and Hauser & Wirth\u2014have committed to measurable carbon reductions, modular exhibition design, sustainable shipping and internal carbon budgeting.<\/span> And tools like the <\/span>Artist Sustainability Toolkit<\/span><\/a> from GCC and platforms like <\/span>Artists Commit<\/span><\/a> work to provide functioning models for integrating sustainability into every phase of exhibition-making, from shipping alternatives and install methods to sourcing and lifecycle planning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Auction houses are also taking note. For example, Sotheby\u2019s Institute will host a conference in London on Nov. 5 on <\/span>sustainability in the art market<\/span><\/a>, inviting dialogue on greener logistics, climate-conscious collecting and environmental accountability.<\/span> On the collector side, ESG considerations have been <\/span>factoring into acquisitions<\/span><\/a>\u2014even if the application is uneven\u2014many are willing to pay a <\/span>premium for sustainable options<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> And for top collectors, sustainability is becoming less of a periphery issue and more <\/span>central to their collecting<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0Collectors are asking<\/a> for their works to be shipped by consolidated land transport and sea freight instead of air, and by utilizing QR codes,\u00a0they\u00a0can actively engage in real change.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>These steps signal a strong shift from symbolic gestures to actual logistical reform.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Max\"Max
From Max Hooper Schneider\u2019s corroded ecosystems to Tom Friedman\u2019s compressed memories, waste becomes the condition of creation. \u00a9 Courtesy the artist, Maureen Paley and Francois Ghebaly. Photo by Paul Salveson.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Don\u2019t call it perfect\u2014just make it public<\/b><\/h3>\n

The danger now isn\u2019t just failure \u2013 it\u2019s \u201cgreenhushing,\u201d<\/span> where institutions <\/span>hide sustainability efforts<\/span><\/a> to avoid scrutiny.<\/span> But perfection isn\u2019t the point. Public, iterative engagement is. Sustainability in the art world won\u2019t be tidy. It will be adaptive, uncertain and, ideally, transparent.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where artists like Schneider and Friedman lead. Not by solving the climate crisis, but by modeling how to cohabit with our detritus, to metabolize \u201cfailure\u201d and to invent new ways of seeing. To find survival not in purity, but in reconfiguration. As Schneider reminds us: \u201cThere\u2019s no waste, only potential.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom Friedman\u2019s \u201cDetritus\u201d<\/a><\/b> is on view at Lehmann Maupin through October 18, 2025, and Max Hooper Schneider\u2019s \u201cScavenger\u201d<\/a> is on view at Pace\u2019s 125 Newbury through October 25, 2025.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Beautiful<\/p><\/div>\n