Participating artists: Linda Benglis, Fritz Buehner, Jenny Dubnau, Robert MacDonald, John Monti, Bruce Pearson, Kay Rosen, James Siena, Shellburne Thurber, Anthony Viti, Carrie Yamaoka

A thing is symmetrical if there is something you can do to it so that after you have finished doing it it looks the same as before. Hermann Weyl, mathmetician (1885-1955)

In the precise mathematical sense, the modern definition of symmetry is “immunity to change.” For artists, symmetry’s potential for a kind of ultimate formal resolution is undeniably seductive. So too is the allure of making an object, or image that is seemingly immune to change. Does our own bilateral anatomy create an innate preference for the same? We wonder, considering both the desire for the perfection suggested by immunity, and the beauty that arises in the small failures toward that quest.