Mean and Sneaking

This is a curatorial project I am working on for March 2010--Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn:

Mean and Sneaking

B Wurtz, Mai Braun, Michael DeLucia, Laura Braciale, Amy Yao, Drew Shifflett, Jeff Feld, Matthew Lusk, Matt Callinan, Elaine Angelopoulos, Jenny Bevill, Andy Coolquitt, Josh Faught

“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath….It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live…always on the limits …a very ancient slough….”

Henry David Thoreau: Where I have Lived and What I have Lived For, Economy

“People forget that I am trying to disappoint”

Gabriel Orozco; defending his Yogurt Caps.

"Mean and Sneaking" is taken from Thoreau about the state of living on the periphery; needing to make promises that can’t be kept, scrounging, borrowing, and removing oneself from the mores of the conventional social order. When Thoreau advocates for Economy, he does so with faith that people need not join the tide of material and commercial wealth seeking, but can follow a life aside and alone, where resourcefulness and self-sufficiency allow ample contentment with Nature as an alternative, substantive, and providing companion. But Thoreau presents an alternately peevish and gloomy attitude. Not everyone is so ready to head for the hills.

The artists in Mean and Sneaking borrow select pages from Thoreau…using what they can find at hand, at home and around to make a living and art. They are awake to the potential of found and conventionally wasted material presented by a society relatively unconcerned with its excess. To Thoreau they say “Thanks!” for validating and poeticizing life away from the rat race, the scrappy persistence and all, but “No thanks!” to the lonely and unsociable attitude. Their life on the outskirts is festive, filled with gift giving and celebration.

Like Gabriel Orozco, these artists stay connected and awake to the matter of daily life, but unlike Orozco, these artists aim to please, gratify and/or entertain. They are guided by a persistent homonym: Presence=Presents. Their use of cadged and modest material celebrates detritus, and shapes it into a generous gift.