6 Strategies

Because this exhibit is intended to focus on process, blur lines between artworks, and reduce the primacy of the individual artist in favor of a loose integrated net of creativity that blankets the entire gallery - even the act of writing a statement about the individual work could be seen to detract from the exhibit's mission.

What follows is therefore, not a concise statement but rather a long rambling description of participation.


In the spring of this year I was invited by Jose Ruiz, curator of Bronx River Art Centre (BRAC) and Heng-Gil Han, curator for the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), to submit responses to a set of questions.

They were asking a variety of artists to respond to the idea of an exhibit where artists would make work in a gallery setting and then have it subsequently altered by others. Among the questions asked were: "What contribution can you make to this unconventional exhibition?", "Can you allow other artists to revise your installation?", and "Who would be other artists that you would like to invite to the exhibition for the revision and collective art-making?"

The resulting exhibit: "Metro Poles, Art in Action", is a curatorial collaboration with Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), the Bronx River Art Centre (BRAC), the Asian American Arts Center (AAAC), and the Maiden Lane Exhibition Space.

Among the things I wrote back in my initial response were the following:

"I will photograph in or near the display space - i.e. nearby buildings, back yards, whatever. The available views will function as a filter or organizing principle. This will become the target of research."

"I will then go out on the street and find anecdotal information from passersby (as well as from people employed by the art institution) regarding who lives there, what business is conducted, what events have been witnessed etc."

"In a third step I will do further historical research about the visually identified locations on-line. I will then make a collage from the various information materials, printed with ink jet, in a variety of sizes and textures of paper and post the information on the galley walls, like fliers or even gorilla-style like paper street art."

"All this material, both the physical printing on paper and the conceptual structure surrounding it would then be available as raw materials to use by subsequent artists in any way they see fit. I would simply hope they might function as a launching off point of interest in the creative process going forward."

I also invited artists Chang-Jin Lee, Marcy Brafman, and Åsa Elzén to be "team members" for our group, one of seven groups to work in the space.

For my part I ultimately adopted 6 strategies, relating to my initial proposal that were designed to explore the Bronx, West Farms, (the neighborhood where BRAC is located), and the area's relationship to the gallery and the mission of the exhibit.