Mutual Friends represents the contemporaneous community that Present Company supports and is a part of, without the imposed subjectivity that normally comes from curation. The artists in this exhibition were selected using an algorithm that pointed to the combined mutual Facebook friends of Balderston, Ruiz, and Stayrook. However, this is not an exhibition about Facebook or a biographical/historical study of social media. While the term “mutual friends” is used for its populist connotations and as an umbrella for examining a particular artistic community, we see friendship as a mutable concept that can inform, if not author, new artworks, projects, performances, events, and writings – all of which will be featured throughout the course of the exhibition – produced by a prescribed assemblage of artists, curators, writers and designers.

Additionally, Mutual Friends uses a curatorial format that shifts away from overt criticality, taste, and commercial relevance in order to establish an arena for that which is sensible, in the context of that which is casual. This exhibition attempts to create a space where situations can be molded into creative experiences and exchanges, perhaps even turning the exhibited experience into something that is collective and personally meaningful.