Old Gold Final Reduction Sale

Outside the Polish Falcoln, Milwaukee WI, May 17th 2008

recontextualized

I had work in two shows over the weekend, both of which were 'heavily curated'. Vega Estates kicked off their summer season of monthly exhibitions with an ambitious group show. Their garage vs basement program will start on June 14th. Last Saturday "The Vega Caucus" promised to recontextualize the included work. The results created a vague narrative, or perhaps developed a fictitious character through installation and curaturial decisions. My ongoing free mixed cd project, which is usually an innocuous stack of cds on the outskirts of my exhibition, was much more public and social. At the curators request my role was more performative. I brought a deck of cards and played 21 with people, and later in the night when I left my post I found the table and cards being used to play war. Via teeny boombox, the mixed CDs provided the backdrop to the rainy opening and Lauren Anderson's dead donkey pinata. Tami Lynn's 20 minute heartbreaking soul ballad played during the violent destruction of the pinata, which turned out to be empty.

Earlier that day, I had a painting in a van sale outside of a bowling alley. Old Gold supplied 23 artists with black canvases and the instructions to make a $100 painting. These paintings were sold out of Old Gold curators Caleb and Kathryn van on the patio of the Polish Falcon for the Milwaukee International Art Fair. They called it the Final Reduction Sale. Mine was the shiny sparkly black one with zillions scrawled while the paint was wet.

mix cds for Vega Caucus

silk screen ink and spray paint on paper envelopes, double cd, edition of 50

untitled collage

drywall tape, acrylic paint on paper 6" x 12"