SPRINGFIELD: EARLY SCULPTURES presents a first formal look at a new sculptural body of work by SHOCK UC MSK, developed from salvaged electrical and industrial components sourced inside the former Pillsbury Mill in Springfield, Illinois.
This online exhibition introduces the early formation of that language: objects built from the infrastructure of a former industrial site and reconfigured into works that carry the charge of graffiti, architecture, labor, and collapse.
In 2023–2024, SHOCK UC MSK established a self-directed artist residency inside the former Pillsbury Mill in Springfield, Illinois.
The building functioned simultaneously as studio, material source, and subject.
Murals, paintings, drawings, and the independently published periodical Unemployment Weekly were produced in parallel while components of the mill’s electrical and mechanical systems were removed, collected, and reconfigured into new sculptural forms.
Constructed from salvaged copper, aluminum, steel, ceramic, and standardized industrial hardware, the sculptures transform functional systems of distribution and control into unstable figurative structures. At times architectural, mechanical, or bodily, the works oscillate between infrastructure and organism.
SPRINGFIELD: EARLY SCULPTURES presents the first formal release of this body of work and documents the emergence of a sculptural language rooted in graffiti, labor, improvisation, and the physical reality of post-industrial space.
