Procession in Polyethylene

Exhibition. 6 works on view at ///groom.quiz.pool, 926 N AMERICAN ST, Northern Liberties. The wall is circular: walking in either direction returns to the title wall. Use Tab to move between works and Enter to read a work’s wall label. Arrow keys move along the wall.

Six works at a single point in the city, the first acquired in June 2025 and the most recent in September 2025; all of them have since been accessioned into the permanent collection. One commissioner: Streets Department. The museum did not solicit any of them.

The works are exhibited in order of acquisition. Visitors will notice that the subject does not change; the museum invites them to consider what does.

1. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 14 — Polyethylene receptacles, casters, curbside placement, ambient shade. Accession 17802086. Acquired June 18, 2025. 456 days on view. The row reads as a single form until the eye reaches the toppled member, whose casters turn outward toward the roadway and break the rhythm of upright lids. Their black polyethylene has dulled unevenly, and the flattened liner on the asphalt extends the arrangement laterally, joining the group to the surface it rests on. Behind them the brick wall and its pale finials supply a formal backdrop the receptacles were not designed to answer, and the museum preserves the work for that unintended pairing.
2. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 15 — Polyethylene receptacles, asphalt, deferred collection. Accession 17821614. Acquired June 28, 2025. 446 days on view. The two bins are set close enough that their moulded flanks nearly touch, the left one held open at an angle by the volume of bagged material inside it while the right remains sealed — a pairing the museum reads as the series' most compact statement. Both vessels have taken on a grey film along their lower halves, dulling the black polyethylene to the tone of the shed behind them. The composition places them at the far edge of a broad, crazed asphalt field, so that the viewer arrives at the work across an expanse of nothing. Preserved here as the interval in which the procession stands still.
3. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 16 — Polyethylene, corrugated board, wheeled receptacles, dappled light. Accession 18025509. Acquired September 4, 2025. 378 days on view. The work is organised around a pale mound of plastic bags that has slumped from the open receptacle onto the pavement, its folds catching full sun while the bins behind it sit in leaf shadow. Cardboard laid flat across the lids functions as a lintel, raising the composition to a height the containers alone could not achieve, and a broken chair frame at the left edge anchors the group to the ground. Where earlier works in the series kept their volume within the receptacles, this one has broken containment entirely and extended laterally along the curb. The museum preserves it as the point at which the series changed shape.
4. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 17 — Polyethylene, corrugated cardboard, wheeled containers, dappled light. Accession 18036411. Acquired September 6, 2025. 376 days on view. The composition rises in three registers: the cardboard stacked above the container rims, the black bins themselves, and the pale spill of bagged material descending to the pavement. Tree shadow falls across the dark wall in irregular patches, and the bags catch the same light unevenly, so that the white polyethylene reads brighter than anything else in the frame. Read against its siblings in the series, this work is the most vertically developed, the cardboard having displaced the lids rather than been contained by them. The museum preserves it as the point at which the arrangement stopped observing the boundary of its vessels.
5. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 18 — Polyethylene, corrugated cardboard, wheeled containment, open-air installation. Accession 18036909. Acquired September 7, 2025. 375 days on view. The composition moves outward from the containers in a low, widening arc: white bags nearest the viewer, the green one set at the far right like a struck note in an otherwise pale register. Cardboard performs the vertical work here, one large flattened carton tipped up out of the open container so that its tan interior catches what light the overcast sky provides. Read against its siblings in the series, this installation is the most forward-leaning, the mass having advanced well past the containers to occupy the sidewalk's full width. The museum preserves it for the clarity with which containment and overflow are held in the same frame.
6. Procession in Polyethylene, No. 19 — Household materials, polyethylene, upended furniture, open-air installation. Accession 18055882. Acquired September 17, 2025. 365 days on view. The chair is the work's governing element: inverted, its back fractured, it rides the open lid of the bin with its legs raised into the air, giving the group an apex the earlier works in the series lacked. Below it the bags settle in a loose diagonal toward the curb, black and white and brown, with cardboard and cans loosening at the margin where the paving begins. The dark fence behind functions as a backdrop, flattening the arrangement and reading it as a single silhouette when seen from the far side of the street. The museum preserves this number for the vertical accent, which it regards as the most compositionally ambitious moment in the series to date.

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