The days are winding down until I leave; back to the beginning. The end doesn't go out in a bang, or a whimper but perhaps with a "pop" - from the champagne. But nowadays, curating a show is an purest and rawest form of avant-garde; naming the show with twenty-one artists is another thing. Yet, in the course of other things to think about (i.e. "Am I making meaningful art?", "What goes in the show?", "Where the hell are my pants?" and etc.) a set of dilemmas comes up to exhume us into a realization of creative block and twenty-something alcoholism.

We played Brian Eno's and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategy (subtitled: over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas), which the 2001 edition introduces itself as:

"These cards evolved from separate observations of the principles underlying what we were doing. Sometimes they were recognised in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack, or by drawing a single card from the shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if its appropriateness is quite unclear..."

I ended up with this:

And this card did help.

Artists, in the situation of war, fight not just with words but with ideas and images. Instead of interruptions, the residents and I get bombarded with the legacy of the New York Studio Residency Program. How do we live up to something we have not witnessed yet experience? And how do we honor those before us?

Director John Tomlinson puts up past exhibition cards on the wall.

The New York Studio Residency Program (formerly just New York Studio Program) has been established since 1992; so it goes without saying there were many visuals to look at on the wall.

For about two weeks, we were coming up with our show title and image for the show cards. We were fighting with titles and images, eventually boiling it down to several titles stemming from "Interrobang" to "All my people are coming with me" (which Nicó Colón coined this). The title materialized in its finality as "You Made Me Do This" which originally came out from critic and curator Dominique Nahas' seminar.

Right now, we are at the process of floor planning and solidifying the space itself. Very imperialistic I would say.
Jan Avgikos and Dominique Nahas talked to us about the show's title and card images itself. Whatever we rejected is just as important than what we are using. The "Law of Exclusion" as Nahas puts it. The group show isn't our white flag but a declaration of war. Because the fight isn't over yet, it is never over for us.

If you are in New York on May 6, come by and check out incredible works from photography, painting, performance, drawing, illustration, video, sculpture, paper cutting, installation, fibers, sound and more.

RSVP here:
http://bit.ly/b6WATY

Tommy "You say 'Goodbye,' and I say 'Hello.'" Kha