Yes or No?

On indeterminacy, serendipity, fluxus, positivity and negativity—and how
I learned to love surprise.

Inspired by John Cage’s ideas of indeterminacy and fueled by the topic of “war of words,” I thought it might be interesting to organize a hive-mind piece that used just 2 words—Yes or No—in a virtual face-off. It was an experiment…a let’s-see-what-happens approach to curating.

When I ran it by director Tammy Pittman (who was also an inspiration for her Objects show), she thought it was interesting and so we sent out an open call .

A few days later I came across an image of an early Fluxus piece by Benjamin Patterson—a card which states simply: “please answer this question carefully”  and then there were two check boxes, one “yes” and one “no.”

I cringed. It’s been done already, I thought…or something very close to it.  But the truth is when you throw an idea out there and give up control, it will always come back anew with a few surprises.

Yes-or-No wasn’t what I imagined (but that was the point, no?) yet it inspired 55 artists to do what THEY imagined. And they did some amazing things…stop by the gallery and take a closer look.

Yes-or-N0 Artists

Row 1 Lisa Cirando, Jan Kruse, Anne Saunders, Lisanne McTerran, Tyrie Kauff
Row 2 Michael Flory, Wayne Kral, Teresa Von Fuchs, Susan Happersett, Jonathan Lux
Row 3 Emily Haydock, Donna Maria de Creeft, Sarah Bodman, Aarati Akkaped, Lily Angotti
Row 4 Dikko Faust, Fred Bendheim, Julie Harrison, Angelo Pastormerlo, Diane Bertolo
Row 5 Travis Schmeisser, Rachael Heinold (with Todd Beers), Jamie McPartland, Drew Pisarra, Paula Berge
Row 6 Molly Biance Gross, Anne D. Bernstein, Todd Beers (with Rachel Heinold), Vincent Lai, Matt Allison
Row 7 Rosaire Appel, Brendan Loper, Thomas Wilk, Elizabeth Whalley, Tom LaFarge
Row 8 Elizabeth Albert, Janet Tsakis, Tammy Pittman, Wendy Walker, Sarah Edkins
Row 9 My Life As A Collage, Paul Bravmann, Matthew Shelley, Eric Schurink, Alexis Myre
Row 10 T J Hospodar, Maria Schurr, Yorgo Vetter, Charlotte Hall, William Considine
Row 11 Manuela Paul, 0H10MIKE, Dustin Harewood, Lucy Edkins, Lauren Raheja