For his second solo show at Martos Gallery, NY, Jory Rabinovitz presents oikos love love love, featuring new work made from Tabby Concrete and copper.
Tabby Concrete is a type of concrete made from burning down oyster shells into lime and adding water, sand and unfired shell. Although rarely used today, Tabby was historically used by colonists in the Southeastern American coast and was usually made by the labor of slaves, not love. As a material, it’s quite laborious to make and not as durable as traditional concrete. Copper is a soft metal, essential to all living organisms, in trace amounts. However, in excess it becomes one of the more toxic ions. The malleable ore was first used 10,000 years ago and began being mined in large scale in the American West during the 1800s. For this show, Rabinovitz sourced his copper from American pennies which were melted down and re-cast, molded, hammered.
The central sculpture, The Death of Abel (2018), is a human form made of Tabby, with a copper-cast head and hand of Abraham Lincoln and copper-cast feet of the Statue of Liberty. The feet, and chain they are attached to, come from original casts that Rabinovitz took by hand from two of only three existing bronze casts of the plaster study for the famous neoclassical Bartholdi sculpture on Liberty island, once known as Oyster Island. The Lincoln head and hands were created from 3D scans of Volks’ Life Mask and hands of Abraham Lincoln (1860, cast 1886) at the Smithsonian.
The work in the show will live on as a smaller 3D scan of the original, complete with both Tabby and copper. At the end of the show, the large sculpture in the middle of the gallery will be donated to the Billion Oyster Project, and placed in the Statue of Liberty estuary. The lime and broken shell in the sculptures will entice oysters to make it their home while the copper will discourage predators. The goal of the Billion Oyster Project is to help restore one billion oysters to the harbor and build up the natural filtration system in New York City’s largest water source.
The process of oysters decontaminating water is called: pseudofeces.
