Between A Scaffold And A Bed Frame

Maite Iribarren Vazquez and Ella Dawn W-S

PUTTY'S CORONATION is pleased to announce the opening of Between A Scaffold And A Bed Frame, a two-person exhibition featuring sculptures and performances by Maite Iribarren Vazquez and Ella Dawn W-S at Putty’s Coronation on 483 17th St, 4B, Brooklyn, NY 11215 from April 20th - May 12th, 2024.

In Between A Scaffold And A Bed Frame lie a wide range of objects and scales of attention. Somewhere in the wood, steel, and insulation separating two enamel coated metal structures, the same material flips between supporting laborers to supporting a body resting from said labor. Residential architecture holds a body when it’s on a bed frame but the architecture itself is propped by the same body when it’s on a scaffold. Between a Scaffold and a Bed Frame explores the inflection points between architectures supporting bodies and bodies supporting architectures. It cites residential structures as perceived to be body-holding and public urban constructions as held by the public body.

In these works, Iribarren Vazquez looks at the attention given to objects when they are perceived as belonging to a public versus private context. She finds residential architecture and public transit infrastructure at opposite ends of this spectrum of attention scales. The materials that compose these environments are quite similar yet given very different levels of care. At the interfaces between these spaces, Iribarren Vazquez references natural gas pipelines, insulated walls, and plumbing installations. She uses distortions in these standard architectural and infrastructural components to speak of the arbitrary boundaries in attention scales they mediate.



Ella Dawn W-S is working within the surfaces of the space, both in their base materiality and their affective potential. The desires that underlie physical training practices impose narrative structures on seemingly impartial physical structures through a series of performances and interactions. These unfold in the stairwell below the skylight, with and on a detached closet door, and in the hallway, delineated by superimposed scaffolding. There is aspiration in our relationship to them. We want to keep them from splaying out, to contain ourselves within them. We look towards them as examples of ongoingness, imagining techniques and practices to engage in a similar score.

Maite Iribarren Vazquez is an artist and structural engineer based in New York City. She received dual bachelor's degrees in art and civil engineering from the University of Michigan on a full merit scholarship and subsequently spent a year and a half in Spain as an apprentice to a master goldsmith. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Milton Avery School of Arts at Bard College.

Ella Dawn W-S is a dancer and choreographer living in Brooklyn. She presents work under the name Dancews. As a performer, she's had the honor of working with Malcom-x Betts, Lu Yim, Vita Taurke, Lavinia Eloise Bruce, SECT, inc., Erik Thurmond, Phoebe Berglund, and Kiera Bono.\