Critical Conditions: Contemporary Art from Wayne, Michigan

Collaborative exhibition with John Murnaghan

January 17 - February 7, 2006

Critical Conditions: Contemporary Art from Wayne, Michigan was shown at the Union Gallery in Kingston, ON from Jan. 17 to Feb. 7, 2006. John Murnaghan and I created all of the work in the show and also enacted the role of "curators" of the exhibition.

Work not effectively documented here included a scale model of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Domino's Farms built out of the remnants of Domino's pizza delivery boxes; "Collector's Corner", a shrink-wrapped table covered in collectable ephemera including a fake Negative Approach 7"; a large drawing of a souvenir pencil from Mackinac Island; a dog-sized cardboard hut entitled "Stop in the Name of Lunch"; a collection of facsimile Detroit Lions jerseys emblazoned with phrases banned by the NFL webstore, and a sculpture which incorporated the vernacular of mini-golf holes as well as a taxidermied bear carcass.

This exhibition oscillated between sloppiness, obsessiveness, inscrutability, jokes, and tenderness in a post-adolescent way, with some works clearly more successful than others. It was about a broken sort of masculinity, fatherhood, America, the Midwest, addiction, ownership and fetishization, as well as the processes of eulogizing.

A not-great-quality scan of the exhibition catalogue very generously written by Graeme Langdon (aka Garfield B. Gasscloud) can be downloaded here.