Dennis Maher is wearing a dark blue robe and slippers as he answers the door of his Fargo Street house for our scheduled 10 a.m. appointment. His black hair is tousled, and it’s apparent that I’ve roused the internationally noted artist from his bed.
Apologetically, Maher explains that he spent most of the night driving home from New York City. The University at Buffalo clinical assistant architecture professor has been in near perpetual motion in recent months as he prepares for a soon-to-open major exhibition at the Albright Knox Art Gallery (see below). But even in his current sleep-deprived state, the amicable Maher is gracious; “Come in and look around,” he says, swinging the door open and making a hasty retreat upstairs.
Looking around is why I’m here. It’s what visitors do. The house is a living monument to the adage that outward appearances can be deceiving. From the street, the only hint of anything out of the ordinary is a striped pattern sanded into the house’s fascia and a few parallelograms of lighter paint on the otherwise monochromatic clapboard. Hardly notable.
Inside, it’s another story. Here is an architectural wonderland where no structural surface has escaped transformation. Fanciful sculptural elements occupy every wall and a good part of the ceilings and floors. Some are freestanding; many are incorporated into the house as if the building itself absorbed the contents of a thrift shop. This is a place where the word “flat” has no relevance.
Original surfaces are stripped away in geometric layers that visually behave like abstract paintings. Everywhere are familiar things: bamboo birdhouses, architect models, train accessories, toys, doll houses, full scale architectural remnants, and navigation globes. All are assembled into elaborate structures that often make it difficult to distinguish where the house ends and art begins. It’s too much to absorb quickly—a sensory overload.
The art historical antecedents of the Fargo House—Maher’s name for his live-in art project—include Russian Constructivists like Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky. Another major influence is Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Maher refers to the Fargo House as a “post-industrial “Merzbau,” the name Schwitters gave to his radically sculptured architectural interiors. Gordon Matta-Clark’s An Architecture, in which the artist deconstructed buildings as art, provides another precedence. And there’s a bit of the Neo-Dadaist wit and painterly expressiveness of Robert Rauschenberg at work here too.
But Maher isn’t thinking of his house as a static work of art. It’s more of a laboratory, or, better, a living organism that absorbs discarded materials through creative grafting. Then, like any organism, it produces offspring. “Sometimes, when I do exhibitions in galleries, pieces go away and don’t come back,” he says. This in turn frees up space for new objects. Maher even talks about the house in biological terms: “It’s necessary to fuel the project and fuel the house, and there’s a pulse, so things have to come in and be absorbed and digested, and that’s all part of the project. Maher spends at least an hour each day gathering “fuel” for his house, which he never intends to “complete.” “I’m interested in the unfinished project and of maintenance as a project,” he notes.
Dennis Maher's living work-in-progress. Photo by Biff Heinrich.
Maher makes extensive use of cut-up and reassembled dollhouses and other architectural models. “I find dollhouses and I think of them as miniature versions of abandoned houses in the city,” he explains. “And I bring them in and reconstitute them and I make fantastical wallscapes utilizing their pieces.” Maher also produces discrete sculptural works as part of his art practice, ranging from moderate-sized floor constructions, to massive room-dominating assemblages of salvaged architectural material. Some of those are here, too.
Maher hopes the house will eventually be used for architecture residencies, a nurturing environment for the artistic spirit. “I want to think of this place as a residency center for creative people who could come to Buffalo and do projects in the city or on the house.” He has plans to make an art gallery in the house. In conjunction with his Albright-Knox project, Maher invited in tradespeople, and he is working with the museum’s education department and students from Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts who are making a video to be included in Maher’s exhibition.
Engaging others in the process seems to be as much a part of the project as the physical house itself. As Mahar says, “There isn’t an attempt to create an environment to make things or people stay, but it’s more like design to make people and ideas move through. So I have tours; I invite people over; I bring objects in; I bring them out. The house was never really conceived as a place where you just go ‘ahhh,’ rather as a space where things are in motion and more restless.” Like the artist himself.
Since last August, artist, educator, and architect Dennis Maher has been working intently toward the January 26 opening of his multilayered residency exhibition titled Dennis Maher: House of Collective Repair. Maher is the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s second artist-in-residence, following the 2008–2009 stay of Ingrid Calame. Maher’s exhibition will utilize reclaimed building materials to create an installation that explores demolition, renovation, and restoration. That much is par for the artist who combines architecture and civic activism in his art. As part of this residency, Maher will also engage the community-at-large in a variety of capacities.
There have already been opportunities for the community to participate through M&T First Fridays at the Gallery, with more planned throughout the residency, which continues through May 12. The Albright-Knox website mentions site visits, artist visits, gallery and community workshops, school projects, and more. A full listing of related events can be found on the museum’s website, albrightknox.org.
Bruce Adams is an artist, educator, and writer living in Buffalo.