Set-Ups

Participants:

Erik Larsson, Jeannine Han, Tamara Henderson, Sverre Strandberg, Lewis & Taggart, Olof Nimar, Dan Riley, Theodore Trottner, Alf Rose, Wendy Rose

This is a set-up.

Elaborately planned and meticulously prepared, this scheme's just for you.

Remember The Sting. A ragtag gang designed and delivered a whole bar and gambling outfit overnight for the entertainment of a single mark.

The set-up, however perfectly conceived, no matter how many variables are taken into consideration and prepared for, there's always the element of chance. Scripted in advance, reality only ever writes its own stories. Not even the weatherman knows which way the wind blows.

Complicated algorithms and combinatorics pair up artists by their desire to be with one another, this set-up was brought to you by technology. So has phishing and the temptation of a letter from Nigeria. You're still trading a cow for magic beans.

But sometimes the beans are magic, aren't they?

Yves Klein patents a gesture, Robert Barry suffuses a space with invisible messages, Yoko Ono gives us shadowy recipes for ephemeral actions, Tom Sachs stares at a blank piece of paper for a thousand hours.

The set-up depends on our need to believe, our desire to put our faith somewhere into something, the longed for break and the long-shot hope.

The set-up here is more existential. Artists are charged by secular modernity to come up with meaning, any meaning, for why we should be alive, what gives heart to our struggle, what is our condition now and why that matters, to articulate the otherwise unspeakable. Some of us even feel a debt to art and are trying through artwork and community to pay it back.

This doesn't have to be an exhibition with all the concomitant connotations for exhibitionism, empty show-off meant to attract attention for its own sake. In psychiatry, exhibitionism is the irrational compulsion to flash one's pink parts. (One can almost imagine a rational compulsion to do the same.)

This can be a set-up, a scheme, a plan. The goal not to swindle but to create meaning. The arrangement doesn't have to be self-aggrandizing, every object and objectmaker fighting for space, more chaotic cacophony of self-interest.

Or maybe it does. That's cool too.

But if it's going to chaos, at least let it be ecstatic. An orgy, a bacchanal. Chaos can be another kind of maker of meaning, albeit a messier one. Distraction is its own kind of opportunity, another kind of scheme.

Either meaningful harmony or ecstatic anarchy, anything in between is just show.

- Andrew Berardini

This will be the first exhibition of a three exhibition series Platform will be hosting with Curatron, an online system for artists to participate in the exhibition selection process. Artists can upload profiles and apply to exhibitions. All applying artists are taking part in selection process as the system calculates everyone's preferences and then presents an exhibiting group of artists.

curatroneq.com

Gallery Hours: 12:00 – 16:00, Thursday – Sunday

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