The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist & The Next Omelet Should Be Made By A Carpenter. - Lawrence Weiner

Kara Bohnenstiel and Melissa Rocha curate a receptive and responsive exhibition: an installed space that forgets to be boring. We Like the Good is constructed in a movable format. All the walls are on wheels, freely moving around the space; a choreography performed by sybaritic women dressed in perfect French maid costumes during the opening night. All successive days and nights can be arranged by the visitors of the gallery. There is a note upon entering the space: “Please arrange this space. Everything is on wheels as this organization is only temporary: Adjust to suit.”

The curators, artists themselves, deploy artists who work within a broader realm of art-making; artists who do not stick to a classic “body of work” approach, in favor of the moment, yet somehow remaining timeless. This “somehow” is the interest of the show. How is anyone making anything interesting anymore? Often it starts with a sort of humor of dissent. Sometimes serious Art can only be approached, revealed from a denial of the formal protocols of “Art-seriousnessness.”

This work, from the ambitious failures of Jim Sharpe’s Robot Movie (with a quintessential Lary Seven soundtrack) to the framed, studied disasters of a Todd Fisher print, avoids the obvious pretensions fatal to the concept behind the conceptual. We get it, all of us do, but seldom does art get a chance to pull it together. Art too often must prove its legitimacy. In taking cue from Seth Price’s description of an artist as “amateur inventor” in his essay “Dispersion”, We Like the Good mounts a Patrick Resing futile robot on a portable pedestal—its programmed mission being only to find its way off. Art is as important as your morning coffee and donut; that is important, surely, but just a cardinal fact of existence. All that is required is our innate curiosity and need for stimulation, in both cases. Laughter implies an afterthought. The exhibition facilitates that thought for the viewers/participants.

The show features an international pool of artists: Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen & Danielle Lemaire (JaDa) [The Netherlands] , Fabio Roberti, Jim Sharpe & Lary Seven [USA], James Clauer [USA], Scott Haggart & Kara Bohnenstiel [Scotland + USA], Todd Fisher [USA], Jack Plug [England], Melissa Rocha [USA], Patrick Resing [USA], and Ryan Lauderdale [USA]. An artist panel will be held to discuss issues of hilarity, failure, large and small meanings, as well as contradictions. The dialogue is also considered to be Art.