#mark benson

SAN FRANCISCO — I will admit that it had been a long day filled with mundane tasks — conference calls, email catch-up, copyediting — when I wandered into the exhibition Office Space, currently on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The day’s tedium made me particularly prone to embrace the show’s premise: offering a thoughtful, funny, and totally unnerving look at modern day office culture. It’s odd to walk into a museum and be greeted with what at first glance appears to be a deconstructed office: a pile of papers sits in a state of disorder on a desk; a disassembled Herman Miller cubicle — partially painted — stands upright, its purpose diminished; French presses rest stagnant with murky water; computer mice lay on the floor, woven into a giant mandala. The mundane nature of the contemporary office is here subverted, pulled apart, teased, and in the most disturbing works, analyzed. We are invited to partake in the spectacle-ization of what for so many people constitutes everyday life.

1964 The Tribute in Owensboro, Ky back in 2008, performing Long Tall Sally.

Mark Benson

Aspiration