Confounding the Conventional Exhibition

In his review in the May edition of Artillery magazine about the just closed Cindy Smith exhibition at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery, Tucker Neal states that the showed worked because it was "powerful specifically because it confounds traditional essentialist exhibition tendencies." In his praise of Cindy's efforts he cites "Smith embraces this idea, takes it to a place where events, both real and imagined, exist on a similar playing field and in doing so encourages her viewers to question the entire notion of an archive..."

I think Cindy's project joins others such as The Museum of Jurassic Techonogly and Bill Burns' Safety Gear Museum for Small Animals in using a tongue in cheek approach to blurring the line between authentic and imagined. It will be interesting to see what follows next in this vein of art that does not rely on April Fools day to have a bit of fun with us.

Cindy Smith's "Moral Museum: Selections from the Bick Archive" was on display at Otis January 20 to March 31, 2007. A summary of the show is archived on the Ben Maltz website and a brochure is available from the Gallery.