POTATOLAB (Solanum tuberosum laboratorium)

Melville Graduate Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York • 8–22 April 2002

POTATOLAB was Jeffrey Allen Price’s MFA thesis exhibition and one of the earliest large-scale manifestations of ideas that would later evolve into the Think Potato Institute. Conceived as a temporary potato research facility, the project transformed the gallery into an immersive environment dedicated entirely to the exploration of the potato as cultural artifact, educational tool, social catalyst, artistic medium, and subject of interdisciplinary inquiry.

Rather than presenting a conventional exhibition of artworks, POTATOLAB functioned as a living laboratory. Visitors entered a space that combined installation art, performance, collecting, research, humor, education, and public participation. The project invited audiences to reconsider an ordinary agricultural object through a wide range of cultural, historical, artistic, and experiential perspectives.

The Potato Laboratory

The Melville Graduate Gallery was transformed into a fictional research institute known as Solanum tuberosum laboratorium. The installation incorporated exhibition displays, educational materials, historical information, potato-related artifacts, books, games, food, music, and participatory activities. Burlap-covered walls, handmade signage, and laboratory-inspired graphics reinforced the atmosphere of a temporary institution devoted entirely to potato studies.

Visitors entering the laboratory received a hand stamp featuring the POTATOLAB emblem, a triangular symbol incorporating an eye and potato motif. Part institutional logo, part playful initiation ritual, the stamp transformed visitors into participants while reinforcing the idea that they had entered a temporary world dedicated to potato research and experimentation.

Throughout the exhibition, visitors were encouraged not only to view the installation but also to engage with it. The gallery functioned as a place for gathering, conversation, performance, experimentation, and discovery.

The Potato Timeline

One of the central features of POTATOLAB was a large hand-drawn historical timeline that extended across the gallery walls. Constructed directly on the exhibition surface, the timeline traced major events in potato history from its origins in the Andes through its global spread and cultural transformation. Entries included figures such as Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, artistic milestones including Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters, agricultural developments, the invention of potato chips, scientific discoveries, and contemporary events such as potato-growing experiments in space.

Part educational resource and part artwork, the timeline reflected Price’s growing interest in connecting diverse forms of knowledge through a single subject. Visitors could follow the potato’s journey across centuries while encountering unexpected relationships between history, science, agriculture, food, art, technology, and popular culture.

The timeline also revealed an emerging methodology that would later become central to both POTATOISM and the Think Potato Institute: the belief that seemingly unrelated disciplines can be connected through the potato. Expanded and revised versions of the timeline would reappear in later projects, including Potato House (2003), and foreshadow many of the research-oriented activities that would eventually become part of TPI.

The Potato Laboratorian

During the exhibition, Price assumed the role of the “Potato Laboratorian,” serving simultaneously as artist, curator, educator, performer, guide, and host. Dressed in a custom burlap laboratory coat and headband adorned with a living potato sprout, he conducted lessons, performances, games, and public programs that blurred the boundaries between scholarship, theater, and social interaction.

The persona allowed the artist to inhabit the fictional world of POTATOLAB while creating opportunities for direct engagement with visitors. Rather than standing outside the exhibition as its creator, Price became an active participant within the experiment itself.

The Potato Stage

A dedicated performance area occupied a significant portion of the gallery and functioned as the laboratory’s public forum. Constructed as both theatrical stage and educational platform, the space included audience seating, a microphone, whiteboard, and custom-built overhead structure from which potatoes could be suspended or released during performances.

The stage served as the site for lectures, games, readings, comedy routines, and audience participation events throughout the exhibition. While some programs were educational in tone, others embraced humor, improvisation, costume changes, and theatrical spectacle. During Potato Comedy Night, Price appeared in a variety of potato-inspired costumes, including a potato-chip bag vest, novelty neckties, hard hats, and other character transformations.

The stage embodied one of POTATOLAB’s central ideas: that learning and entertainment need not be separate activities. Educational lectures could become performances, performances could become lessons, and the potato could function simultaneously as subject matter, prop, symbol, and catalyst for collective experience.

One memorable performance culminated with Price quoting Shakespeare’s famous line, “Let the sky rain potatoes,” as potatoes were released from above the stage, transforming a literary reference into a playful theatrical event.

Public Programs

POTATOLAB unfolded through a series of events and performances presented over the course of the exhibition.

Potato Lesson I

An introductory presentation exploring the cultural, historical, artistic, and symbolic dimensions of the potato.

Potato Game Night

An evening of participatory games and activities that encouraged visitors to engage with potato culture through play, competition, and collaboration.

Potato Reading: Stories for Kids

A day devoted to children’s literature and storytelling featuring potato-themed readings and educational activities.

Potato Lesson II

A continuation of the educational component of the project, expanding upon themes introduced during the first lesson.

Potato Comedy Night

An evening dedicated to humor, absurdity, and potato-related comedy. Costumes, performances, stories, and audience participation highlighted the project’s playful spirit.

Closing Reception

A final gathering celebrating the conclusion of the laboratory and the community that had formed around it.

Legacy

POTATOLAB marked a significant turning point in the development of Jeffrey Allen Price’s potato practice. Many of the ideas first tested during the exhibition—including public programming, collecting, interdisciplinary research, community participation, educational outreach, merchandising, temporary institutions, and Potato Humanities—would later become foundational components of the Think Potato Institute.

Looking back, POTATOLAB may be understood as the first public prototype of the Think Potato Institute, bringing together collecting, education, performance, research, humor, merchandising, and community participation within a single temporary institution. More than an exhibition, the project served as an early model for the institutional framework that would continue to develop over the following decades and remains one of the earliest and clearest expressions of the ideas that would eventually define both POTATOISM and TPI.