Saturday night at the Dirty Shed

(Photo, Gretchen Bennett)

During the day at Seattle’s Dirty Shed, an exhibit conventional in format if not delivery hung on the walls. On
one side were paintings by Jason Hirata. He made them by mixing with
blue pigment the sweat he generated in cleaning out the space.

Facing them were the tiny collages of Sol Hasemi. He made them using wood
samples from a flooring shop with keepsake-tags for scrapbooks ordered
online.

One, in particular:

At night, however, Hirata and Hashemi improvised with florescent tubes of light.

Photo, Gretchen Bennett. Left to right, Hirata and Hashemi.

Working around guests, they pulled up thick, short planks of the floor to give the rubble underneath a saturating third degree: light below, light above. I thought of Chris Burden’s excavation beneath MOCA for its opening in 1979, nearly a decade before Hirata and Hashemi were born. They can take him for granted. For them, he’s an assumed context.

What Hirata and Hashemi added to their Burden base is modest. Instead of revealing the foundations of a museum, they rooted around in a garaage. They are, however, focused, and it is within that focus that they shine; Hirata using the sweat of his body to produce sweet little drawings, and Hirata rearranging materals he finds largely online. They are both master improvisers who change the rules of their engagement with each foray.

How they get where they’re going is important too. A video showed Hashemi driving the lights to the site, which are inexplicably lit in the back of a van.

(Photo, Gretchen Bennett)

The Dirty Shed is in the backyard off the alley of Betsey Brock/Eric Fredericksen’s house. She’s communications director for the Henry, and he is director of Western Bridge. Hirata and Hashemi’s collaboration, which has been running, off and on, for several weeks, is the Shed’s debut. Hard to imagine a better one.

(Photo, Gretchen Bennett)

Saturday night was the last night, but Brock/Fredericksen plan to keep it going. Not only are they now curators of the hottest DYI space in town, their shed is clean. In the interests of accuracy, will they have to rename? (Jen Graves on the project here.)