“Work in Progress”

Douglas Paulson and Ward Shelley, Archive

Here’s one formula for making art: Take an idea and execute it without a hitch. Here’s another: Take an idea, get sidetracked and discouraged, keep going anyway. Aldrich Museum curatorial director Jessica Hough organized this show with the second, more realistic—and more entertaining—scenario in mind.

Painter Martin Bromirski presents a wall of 192 rejection letters he received from arts institutions between 1991 and 2006—one is a form letter from the Aldrich signed by Hough herself. Next to it you’ll find Bromirski’s polite kiss-off of a response: thank you for your previous consideration of my work, but i have decided not to accept your rejection. João Onofre’s video documents a live vulture the artist let loose in his studio. It nibbles paper, skitters across the floor, tries to spread its wings—a mesmerizing display of frustration. Tom Burkhardt constructs a full-scale artist’s studio almost entirely from cardboard, from the brushes in tin cans to the paint-splattered floor. We view the project at a remove, on videotape, rendering it even more recursive and haunting.

But the show-stopper is Douglas Paulson and Ward Shelley’s Archive—an exhibition unto itself. It is a labyrinthine conglomeration of 1,400 boxes, each labelled with an idea (seemingly every single thought that has ever occurred to the artists). A small sampling: structures where none exist; escaped coyotes; happiness myths—happy artists little & big. When I asked the person behind the desk if the boxes were all empty, he said “Yes.” Then he paused and added, “But the ideas are all there.”—Sarah Schmerler