A performance by Kresge Fellow Russ Orlando

Friday, October 2, 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Johnnie Redding who was found frozen in ice at the
bottom of a elevator shaft, February 2009.

A Detroit News story in January reported of a man found frozen in a block of ice at the base of the abandoned Roosevelt Warehouse’s elevator shaft. The body of John Redding, 56, of River Rouge, had to be sawed free.

The story stung artist Russ Orlando. “The thing that got me was, who was this man? How did he get to that point? We’re all susceptible to be in that position.”

Part of a trilogy dedicated to Detroit, Going Down is a visual ode to Redding and to time stilled. The tragedy of Redding’s death was magnified by its particular environs: once the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, heaps of unused textbooks lay strewn throughout its derelict husk, so many possibilities left to waste and wither. “It made me think of the relics of people found from ancient civilizations, frozen in time,” says Orlando.

Detroit holds deep personal meaning to the artist. “Besides my birthplace, I find a lot of conflict in myself, and I think I relate that to the city.”

Going Down refuses to sit there quietly and be perceived without the presence of the artist literally breathing within it. “The sculpture is incomplete until the performance,” says Orlando. “I’m working out the process live, so the audience can be an active member in it.”

Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University
480 West Hancock
Detroit, MI
Phone: 313-577-0770
Email: at6531@wayne.edu