The Cardboard Show: Perennial Plague

The Cardboard Show: Perennial Plague
The Fourth Annual Cardboard Show
Site-specific installation by Artists; Porkchop & Bradley Hoffer
The Art Spot is pleased to present Perennial Plague, the fourth installment of the annual Cardboard Show by Porkchop and Bradley Hoffer — the artists behind Asbury Park’s beloved handmade Cardboard Giving Tree and many of the murals found throughout the city.
In this immersive installation, the duo transforms corrugated cardboard into illuminated botanical forms that feel both familiar and otherworldly. Radiating from walls and ceiling, the sculptures suggest oversized blossoms, spores, or quiet mutations. Light filters through layered cardboard, casting shifting shadows that animate the space and give the work a sense of growth and movement.
Perennial Plague considers what might flourish if human presence receded — how flora and fauna could slowly reclaim built environments. The title hints at recurrence rather than catastrophe: cycles of growth that persist, spread, and return. What we often frame as “invasive” or threatening may simply be nature doing what it has always done — adapting, expanding, and surviving. The exhibition continues the dystopian thread explored in last year’s show, Anti-AI: A Cardboard Odyssey.
Using one of the most ordinary and disposable materials, Porkchop and Hoffer once again elevate cardboard into something immersive and architectural. Corrugation becomes structure, texture, and light filter; the temporary becomes enduring. As with their celebrated Cardboard Giving Tree, the artists demonstrate how modest materials can transform a space — and how beauty can emerge from what we typically overlook.
In Perennial Plague, bloom and blight coexist. The work spreads across the gallery, quietly suggesting that nature does not disappear — it waits.