Mattress Factory

Inside Meg Webster's "Solar Grow Room".

The Mattress Factory is way cool! It's a world famous museum dedicated to site specific installations. Instead of flat, two-dimensional art on the walls that has to pull the viewer into its space, installation art can invade the viewer's three-dimensional space. It surrounds you and has all your senses to engage. Beginning in 1977, the Mattress Factory has been flourishing as a home for this unique art form. They now have three separate buildings overflowing with art that are perfect for hours of exploring at your own pace.

James Turrell is a world famous conceptual artist who uses light as a medium, and the Mattress Factory has three of his works permanently on view on their own darkened floor, which you can reach only by elevator. He recently gave the Mattress Factory a huge outdoor installation called "Skyspace". Their plan is to build a concrete deck above their small parking lot, so that they can install the artwork on top of it. This work is valued at a million dollars, and it is an incredible gift to the Mattress Factory and to the city of Pittsburgh. When it opens (next year?) it will definitely make Pittsburgh even more of a magnet for fans of this legendary artist.

The Mattress Factory also has two Yayoi Kusama works on permanent view. She is also world famous, a superstar in Japan and well beyond, with a blockbuster show coming soon to Cleveland. The touring exhibition is generating plenty of attention for the Mattress Factory installations.

Their building at 516 Sampsonia Way is currently devoted entirely to an installation by the artist Dennis Maher, entitled "A Second Home". It's a surreal experience of light, sound, moving projections, and above all meticulous assemblages.

We visited on a weekday, because on weekends both "A Second Home" and James Turrell's "Pleiades" require timed tickets, and lines form for the Kusama installations also. They are not to be missed! Unfortunately we did not know about Sarah Oppenheimer's "610-3356", which is in a locked room. If you want to see it, you just have to ask the attendant on that floor, who will have a key. It is only open on request, and otherwise is locked, because the work includes a hole in the floor. An attendant must be present for safety reasons. If you aren't warned first, the experience of discovering it can be jarring. It fits right in with the best reason to visit the Mattress Factory, to see something you've never seen before.

Checking out James Turrell's "Catso, Red". Photographing the work of a
light artist, especially Turrell, is pretty silly. It definitely has to be experienced.

Detail from Vanessa German's "sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies". 

Detail from Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Dots Mirrored Room".

Detail from Yayoi Kusama's "Repetitive Vision".

Allan Wexler's "Scaffold Shoes".

John Latham's "Untitled 2 Test for Long Glass". ("Long Glass" is a much larger piece.)

Detail from Greer Lankton's "It's All about ME, Not You".

Detail from Dennis Maher's "A Second Home".

Detail from Dennis Maher's "A Second Home".

Detail from Dennis Maher's "A Second Home".

Detail from Dennis Maher's "A Second Home".