About

The Decorator Crab project takes its name from a marine creature that covers itself with fragments of its surroundings and so passes unnoticed. The works often do the same. What interests the artist is the impulse that arises when someone does notice one—and whether that impulse can be passed on to anyone else.

To preserve that moment of noticing, the project deliberately withholds information. Works may be placed in public or private spaces without revealing their title, size, medium, or location. Partial traces—photographs, printed matter, videos, sculptures—circulate, but the content remains fragmentary. The subject of the photographs is rarely the work itself, but rather its “witnesses”: people, objects, or landscapes suggesting its presence.

Each iteration differs in form and context, making Decorator Crab difficult to detect. The number of viewers may be none, or only a few. Yet for those who happen upon it, the surrounding landscape can suddenly shift into something subtly uncanny.

Among the works in the series: a pink cat too large to photograph, wedged into corridors and between buildings (Mr. Kobayashi the Pink Cat); a sports bag left lying in the museum, which becomes a work only when someone takes it for lost property, mentions it to the staff, and is told they may pick it up (Very Heavy Bag); a rope that visitors pull, alone or with others, to move something out of sight (Pulling Time); a handle that, turned by a visitor, sets something moving far outside the building, where they cannot see it (Expecting Spectators); and walls that visitors push until the room changes shape (Arrangement, Adjustment, Movement). Some of them are never seen, simply because no one notices them. Those who do notice cannot look away—and cannot easily tell anyone else what it was like.