Small Office

Don’t Mind the Rock

Los Angeles, USA
2016



This is not just about motels, it is about all of America. The recession of the motel as the American place of comfort speaks directly to the socio-economical transitions happening in the country in the past 50 years.The disappearance of this building type is caused by the disappearance of the American middle class. The motel used to be where the non privileged America could comfortably rest in their travels and enjoy refreshing pools in the summer while exploring the vast cross-country highway. Now it is a place with no audience and no ability to continue in its former glorious form. Like a manifestation of absence, this solid black mass emphasizes the disappearance of one of America's greatest architectural typologies: the motel. The mass directs the attention away from itself and onto the context of this room. A place that used to be about familiar comfort is now a place for discomfort. In turn, the motel itself is not the real issue for its decline, but rather the context it exists in.

This installation was part of the One Night Stand LA exhibition in Los Angeles. Attended by over 2,000 people in a single night, this sculpture was in one of the 20 rooms taken over by invited artists. The rock was intended to simply challenge the scale of the motel room. An object so big that it made you question the conventions of scale.