Sean Duffy at Suzanne Vielmetter LA Projects

Art in America, Sept, 2005 by Michael Duncan

In scruffy group shows and solo exhibitions over the past decade, Sean Duffy has been praised for his offbeat delineations of Star Trek characters made of fake fur and for conceptually wacky sculptures such as Triple-Tumtable (2001), a record player rigged with three tone arms that plays discordant grooves simultaneously. This exhibition marked Duffy's most sustained effort to date, with a focus and depth surpassing previous bodies of work. Titled "Temporary Worker," the show filled the gallery, patio and back office with eight large sculptures and installations (all 2004) constructed from used and altered filing cabinets.

The showstopper, Casual Friday, consisted of a 12-by-10foot partially submerged cluster of toppled file cabinets, with open drawers used as planters for a variety of mosses, grasses and bonsai-like small trees. Additional drawers contained more burgeoning greenery. The installation included a platform basin of redwood beams that held water which was pumped up through various crevices in the arrangement to trickle down and nourish the thriving ecosystem. An upended desk leg became a gurgling fountain, as if it were a spring-hole feeding the now bucolic aftermath of a tornado. The post-disaster setting seemed the sublimated fantasy of a disgruntled pencil-pusher.

In other works, Duffy reshaped filing cabinets into Minimalist sculptures. Echoing the look of a 1960s geometric piece by Robert Morris, Steelcase is a 5-foot-high hollowed square made by cutting through the sides of two abutting metal cases and lining the aperture with redwood paneling. Also meticulously lined with redwood slats, in the manner of patio furnishing, is the 3-foot-diameter hole of Happy Hourcut through the sides of another cabinet. For Town, Duffy recontoured a prone, face-down cabinet, lining the newly curved surface with redwood boards to create a designer-chic lounge chair.

Duffy's beautifully crafted, transformative works are sly critiques that pack an antiestablishment punch. Rather than wallowing in the abject, however, he revamps the drab gray building blocks of bureaucratic drudgery into patio-friendly Minimalist forms, tony accoutrements for suburban leisure. In doing so, he comically updates the radical '70s notion (associated with artists such as Donald Judd and Scott Burton) that high-art objects might have a social function. Power to the temp people!