Grand Openings, SculptureCenter

In a hidden nook just off SculptureCenter’s main exhibition space is a small gallery that, in its current incarnation, could easily be overlooked. On its white walls hang a light box and ten framed posters, all of them featuring the words “Grand Openings” in a variety of fonts. In its center is a table on which lie several copies of a nondescript black book.

This unremarkable layout is likely to inspire most visitors to glance at the posters, flip through the book and move on, seduced by the rhythmic music and pulsating lights of Mike Kelley and Michael Smith's installation next door. Those who linger will be rewarded with the discovery of an eclectic publication filled with strange charts, hand-drawn diagrams, excerpts from defunct philosophical journals and transcripts of online chats about Germany’s Next Top Model. At that point, the most intrepid may seek out the exhibition’s press release, google "Grand Openings" and begin to piece together the history of a relatively new art collective – their first collaboration took place in 2005, at Performa05 in New York - who mount bizarre performances that are evidently best enjoyed live.

Grand Openings’ beautifully designed publication is full of fascinating contents. It also presents an intriguing conundrum: is it an archive of the group’s past work, a blueprint for future interventions, an artwork in and of itself, or all of the above? Still, the book alone is not sufficient to grab and hold an audience’s attention, and the exhibition amounts to little more than a reading room.

SculptureCenter is an odd choice of venue for this sculpture-less setup. It could be argued that printed matter is a form of sculpture, or that Grand Openings’ performances constitute “living sculptures” but nowhere does the curator indicate whether he supports or rejects those hypotheses.

Although this bland installation may enable Grand Openings to reach a wider audience, it doesn’t do justice to the group’s chaotic energy. Additional props, ephemera and/or videos would have been more evocative of the collective’s interdisciplinary experiments, and a wall text describing the group’s ethos would have provided much-needed context. While some mystery might spark curiosity and generate buzz, visitors should not have to devote hours to post-visit research in order to fill-in the blanks of a poorly conceived exhibition.