A Thread in the Fiber

A shiny, inflated, metallic art piece fills a room. The "sculpture" is geometric, but appears to be stuffed or inflated. Several arms coming off of the piece, which bend at various points. It fills the large loft style space it is photographed in.
Photo by Mark Lawyer

Wasserman Projects is a Detroit art space that opened on September 25 of last year. The building is in Eastern Market, and is part of a larger cultural resurgence in the Metro Detroit area.

On the left once you enter, there is the small construction of a wooden building, which has a slant on the top left side that appears to be a skyscraper. It is a gutted building which allows the viewer to peer inside and see tables and desks; the outside has construction workers and a man climbing the building, appearing to juxtapose ideas of white collar corporate work, blue collar work, and a physical manifestation of a person ascending the ranks. Other pieces include decrepit houses, some painted colorfully, some just beaten down from years of use and eventual abandonment. One house floats in the distance surrounded by a red atmospheric landscape.

In the back behind the curtains there is a mammoth of a display named “The sound and the future,” beating tribal music and a dark atmosphere to give a cave like and primal setting, contrasted by a shiny chrome inflatable structure with straight edges that look akin to the way a pipe might turn through a house.

The music pounds lightly in the background as the piece inflates and deflates itself, swinging between extremes as a pendulum might. The piece appears as a collocation of modernity and old world antiquities. Still, even this interpretation could be flawed. As Gary Wasserman, the founder of the museum stated, “Artists allow for open interpretation of their works; even if they have their own vision, they want people to decide for themselves.” The aforementioned interpretation has plenty of room for error, and it’s best for one to get out and experience the work to understand the complexity of it.

Wasserman Projects adds another element to a rich and growing Detroit. Wasserman observes, “A single gallery or restaurant does not make a town or city. It’s the collective experience, being able to visit galleries, go to markets and eat at restaurants in the same day. That is what makes a city. A city is a fabric made of many threads.” Wasserman Projects plans to offer a new project in the future called, “Cosmopolitan Chicken,” throwing people into an exhibit where chickens roam freely. Wasserman Projects threads such everyday experience into the fibers of Detroit.