This exhibition pairs two artists with wildly different practices- Eric LoPresti, a painter, with Amanda Browder, a soft sculptor. The artists are strangers to each other; selected by Field Projects to exchange a finished work and to re-create that work by forcing themselves on it in any way they please. No preconceptions stain their attempts; no obligations of friendship or acquaintance constrain what they can or cannot do.

In the highly competitive Chelsea gallery district, both success and failure are continually on display and are often signaled by proximity to known successes or failures. A single group show with a known success can make a career. An unfortunate collaboration can break it.

Our novel form of interaction raises questions about the nature of collaboration and competition, success and failure. Is competition inherent in collaboration? Will the artists move toward unity and resolution, merging opposed disciplines, practices, and aesthetic sensibilities, or will they subjugate and corrupt the other artist’s work? And which would be best for each artist? Should they trust the other artist to treat their work in a collaborative way or should they forcibly impose their vision of how the other artist’s work ought to be?

Each artist will display their unmolested work on a single wall with the space between them displaying the two adulterated products of the Forced Collaboration.