Tim Eads’ exuberance confined at Templeton

Tim Eads installation detail, including a french-fry maker visible under the drape, right, with green basket. 
Photo by Carlos Avendano

Tim Eads’ exuberant Species of Spaces feels confined in Rebekah Templeton’s storefront gallery. I like this work. But I wonder how it would blossom in a larger space?  I remember an Environment Paul Thek created years ago at Documenta, a room of sand dunes and art and peace and quiet breathing.  Stuck in that stupid German city for a week I could instantly re-gain my composure in Thek’s room.

Tim Eads installation Species of Spaces, detail, at Rebekah Templeton.  
 Photo by Carlos Avendano

Eads’ opening was also a performance which sadly I missed. In Eads’ space one acquires joy. It’s the contraptions.  A piano wire strummed by a Jean Tinguely-machine is called Violin and evokes, as well, John Cage’s prepared pianos. In another Eads plays with water!

Tim Eads' installation Species of Spaces, detail, at Rebekah Templeton

Thek and Tinguely and Cage  are dead. Eads’ quiet Plow reminds me of certain work by the contemporary artist Tom Shannon. Shannon exhibits along the Tokyo-New York-Paris-Berlin circuit. I doubt either artist knows the work of the other. But they share an intellectual ancestor, Marcel Duchamp. Shannon and Eads both make contraptions. But Shannon’s work sleekly provokes wonder whereas Eads intentionally brings merry smiles. One Eads’ sculpture makes French fries.  He adds  LEDs to his spirographs. A quiet aquarium pump hums happily out a paper megaphone.

Tim Eads' chips, made on opening night