Ficus Interfaith
Frame House Whereabouts

September 14 – October 21, 2018
Opening Reception September 14, 6-9pm

The word ‘building’ is both a noun and a verb: the structure itself and the act of making it. As a noun, a building is shelter that has a roof, walls and stands more or less permanently in one place.

Ancient households layered sand to cover compacted earth; creating a warm, soft covering that could be replaced regularly. In some dwellings, seed shells such as peanut and sunflower were scattered across the floor. As it was walked on, the oil from the shells would coat the occupants' feet and become spread out across the ground, hardening its surface while making it more compact, stable, and free of dust.

Archaeologists use the term, terrazzo, to describe some of the floors created over 10,000 years ago in Neolithic settlements across Western Asia. Excavation notes illustrate beautiful, dusty pads of mottled stone chips pressed and polished into patterns in the ground. This practice continued through antiquity as marble artisans fashioned the floors of their own homes with the leftover marble tile scraps from the days’ work. Today, many of the aggregates used in terrazzo are pulled from the industrial waste-stream, continuing its history of reuse in construction.

For this exhibition, Ficus Interfaith presents a series of terrazzo frames. These frames, along with an additional suite of sculptures, describe navigating a house. The works occupy two floors, vibrating between the distinctions of display room and domestic space. Windows and doors operate as metaphors for other worlds, portals with the potential to activate your imagination. Embracing the spirit of collaboration and highlighting the pragmatism of reuse, the sculptures invite all to ‘play house’. The gallery acts as a skeleton with borrowed flesh, the unlived foundation of a more complete and separately constructed space.

Ficus Interfaith (is a collaboration between Ryan Bush (b. 1990, Denver CO) and Raphael Cohen (b. 1989, New York, NY). As much a research initiative as a sculptural practice, Ficus Interfaith pursues projects that focus on their personal and collective interactions with nature and natural history. Their work has been exhibited at Prairie (Chicago, IL), Alyssa Davis (NYC), MX Gallery (NYC) and Gern en Regalia (NYC) and they were artists in residence this year at 2727 California Street (Berkeley, CA) and Shandaken: Storm King (NY).