Lauren McKeon: Compost Problems

Opening Reception | Saturday, April 23, 2022 | 4–6 pm

It’s difficult to say what makes a perfect apple. Perfect for what? Cider? Baking? Carving into an old shriveled head then casting in silver? The shape of perfection is rooted in usefulness and the moment of transition when something becomes “decayed” is equally ours to decide. That’s just the beginning of our compost problems. Some things are fugitive and leave before we’re ready (an ideal peach is already so close to being spoiled) and some things linger on forever when we’d prefer to let them go. These fast and slow processes are mirrored in our bodies: we age and decay but we also grow and transform. We’re the cheese cultivating a film of mold, the preserved fruit getting sweeter in the jar, the whiskey tasting stronger as it evaporates in the bottle, the mushrooms growing from a pile of dead mice, and we’re the mice too. Compost problems are poetic and pathetic. They’re a bit humiliating in a time when we need humility. 

It would be easy to explain Lauren McKeon’s work by saying “She lives in the woods.” Her materials and ideas connect to a rural subsistence domesticity that tries to make sense of and attend to the effort of survival. Patient observation has always seemed to be there; allowing her to create sculpture, installation, and performance that is tied to wherever she is and however she is living. She’s an embodied person. This exhibition is particularly situated in a small house in Vermont, a place where time moves slow and fast (nothing ever happens except the stark seasons rapidly shuffling in and out) and that also holds a deep history for her personally, familially, and culturally. Comprised mostly of small sculptures made from precious materials (silver, ruby, onyx, garnet), Compost Problems doesn’t so much command your attention as it rewards it.

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