FOUNTAIN I by miles greenberg
On May 22, 2022, WORTHLESSSTUDIOS presented Fountain I, a seven-hour solo durational performance installation by Miles Greenberg.
In Fountain I, a lone figure stands atop a white plinth that floats over a large pond of blood. The figure’s chest and hands appears to be hemorrhaging profusely into the reservoir below. This piece, inspired heavily by the work of the late Viennese activist painter Hermann Nitsch, acts as a poem about the final stages of heartbreak: “when one finally turns one’s entire body inside out to reach a sort of ecstasy” says Greenberg.
The performance was documented live in front of the audience as moving image and 3D scanning to create both video work and sculptural pieces a posteriori. This documentation acts as a standalone investigation into art history and its relationship to entropy.
Greenberg’s sculptural work, as well as his live performance practice, are grounded in a fascination with the romanticism of classical sculpture, the rigour of modern architecture, and a nuanced understanding of how energy flows through the body.
Miles Greenberg (b. 1997 in Montreal, Canada) creates large-scale, sensorially immersive and often site-specific environments revolving around the physical body in space. These installations are activated with often extreme durational performances that invoke the body as a sculptural material. Rigorous and ritualistic in its methodology, Greenberg’s universe is one that relies on slowness and the decay of form to heighten the audience’s sensitivities.
As WORTHLESSSTUDIOS’ inaugural commission, Fountain I celebrated the breaking ground of our new space at 7 Knickerbocker.
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