Chance Operations
Chance Operations
1” buttons
“Less concerned with the strict enforcement of the plan, her working method incorporates the accidental. The Chance Operation With Blue Buttons points to a willingness to incorporate error and the uncontrolled event. Offered freely to denote membership in art viewing, 1000 blue buttons engage and acknowledge the viewer as participant in the exhibition, as something between jewelry and the I.D. badge. The button is used as an indicator of social and cultural values. It announces a stance: the selection of a favorite band, sports team, or social/political position. With these buttons, found in the garbage and brought unchanged into the gallery, text and image are removed. In this emptying buttons theorize an << I WAS THERE >> secret society of gallery people and dramatize both the exclusiveness and openness of the public exhibition.” - Gordon Laurin (Halifax: 1997)
Provenance: Mitchell Weibe & Lucy Pullen, April 9 - May 27, 1997, St. Mary’s University Art Gallery, curated by Gordon Laurin, Halifax NS Canada; See-through Cities, Christopher Cutts Gallery, April 2 - 30, 1998, co-curated by Luis Jacob, Adrian Blackwell & Kika Thorne, Toronto Canada; Ten by Twenty, with Nayland Blake & Robert Crouch, Parry Chang & Francois Xavier Courreges, Ricky Jay & Rosamund Purcell, Josh Lazcano & Barry McGee, Alicia McCarthy & Ruby Neri, Manuel Ocampo & Chris Oliveria, Ruben Ortiz-Torres & Jim Mendiola, Will Rogan & Lucy Pullen, Carrie Mae Weems and Pamela Vander Zwan, October 18, 2023 - January 4. 2004, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, curated by Renny Pritikin; Magic Is, with Michael Fernandes, February 2 - 29, 2024, Lovitt NYC, Ridgewood Queens