For Instructions: 9 Sculptures, Mira Dayal invited nine artists, curators, writers, and scholars to write sets of “instructions” for each steel sculpture in a body of work on view in the exhibition “Steel Model of Paper Copy of Desk Top with Pencil Groove” at Spencer Brownstone Gallery. The instructions—by Isabel Bird, Ella den Elzen, Shannon Lee, Dana Lok, Shannon Mattern, Chris Murtha, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Sophie Rose, and Moira Sims—at times describe how the contributor imagines the work was produced, or how they would use or perform with the object in the room, or how they would further manipulate the material on view to produce something else. Together, the instructions emphasize different facets of Dayal’s work: excessive modes of labor, iterative and embodied approaches to form and scale, webs of signification, and explorations of what constitutes a tool.
With contributors from Isabel Bird, Ella den Elzen, Shannon Lee, Dana Lok, Shannon Mattern, Chris Murtha, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Sophie Rose, and Moira Sims
2025
Second printing, edition of 50
Published with Spencer Brownstone Gallery
