#ericabaum

              81 Grand Street between Greene and Wooster is already full of images in my head before even arriving at the address. To my pleasant surprise the reality is not far from the expectations of Erica Baum's studio in the heart of Soho. Charged with historical baggage, the area doesn't fall short from its history or its modern-day situation. The Drawing Center, The Swiss institute and Deitch Projects all but a stone throw away from her first floor studio slash living quarters.

            After a quintessential New York walk-up to the first floor, via a stairway that seems more like a tilted wall, the smiling Erica greeted us. Immediately a sense of warmth and honesty filled the long corridor and open living loft space. A smell of old books filled the non-air conditioned room and I was immediately confronted with a myriad of things to look at. In the corner of the room piles and piles of boxes with what could be children's toys or experimental materials.

Organized boxes of markers and Lego next to a children’s size table are as inviting as a first day of Kindergarten. On the shelves, as one would expect, rows upon rows of smelly paperbacks with titles like An illustrated History of the Horror Film, The Couch or Bob Hope's The Women I Love. On the shelves, beautiful old wooden building blocks next to a collection of CDs, stacks of paper and stacks of vintage vinyl. An old set of camel coloured and well-worn Barcelona chairs are as pleasant as Erica's personality and immediate charm.

             On the wall The Dog Ear series stand proud and quietly, while naked eye is placed subtly between two large pieces from The Piano Roll series. Her work is very true to her living and working space, the book, carrier of language, living in the same space as their cataloguer.

             Her work is about language but also about the tactile qualities that modern day technologies threaten to erase. Her space is as intimate as the work from the Naked Eye Series and I begin to feel, even though, invited and welcomed as a bit of a voyeur. Should I be looking at the clutter and corners of her living space? Does she want the main protagonists of her work, the paperbacks, to be looked at out of the context of her work? It is a pleasant surprise and very true to her persona that the only traces of technology are a very old TV with an antenna and a ten year-old PowerBook, which holds so much dust, it's unimaginable to think it has been opened in the past 6 months.