Review

“Approach”

Ai Gallery, through Feb 24

“Approach” was curated by Research & Development, an independent curatorial project started in 2005 by Matthew Hoffman and Lee Piechocki with the goal of putting up shows in galleries around the city. This exhibition features two tactics of conceptual art making: the performative and systematic. “VINYL,” an ongoing project by JB Daniel, is a site-specific installation based on rigorous criteria. Daniel’s process involves visiting a site, drawing up a schematic in response to the structure found there, and then installing his work—in this case, a modified section of vinyl siding. The result has the look of a minimalist object in the vein of Donald Judd, where the use of a common material blends the everyday with cool modernism. Framed and on the wall, they are blank stand-ins, signifying the idea of paintings. Daniel’s process could almost be a performance except we don’t see the preparation—we learn of it through the accompanying texts.

While Daniel labors toward a final product, Industry of the Ordinary (the art duo of Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson) stages special events that yield supporting documentation.

Both are working in the temporal. Unless you commission Daniel to make a VINYL piece for you, his work ends with the show. IOTO’s work, like most performance art, is mainly experienced as documentation. Its section of “Approach” is an installation of images of their different projects. For Democracy, IOTO placed a neon sign reading VOTE FOR ME in sites around the city and documented it; one photo shows the sign in the window of a house, and the same slogan is written in big letters in the windows of the gallery. With presidential hopefuls announcing their candidacies for 2008, the work takes on a new currency.


— Erik Wenzel