WHY WERE YOU BORN?

Barbeito, Baxter, Bureau, Dupont, Disney, Espinosa, Ganesh, Hedges, Hines, Kaga, Lam, Mapplethorpe, Matta, Miller, Moreno, Newman, Orbitowski, Perry, Picasso, Renoir, Spangler, Séguin, Tucker, Walker, Warner, Watts and Young

Charest-Weinberg is pleased to present WHY WERE YOU BORN?, a group exhibition featuring 27 multi-generational artists of widely divergent fame, notoriety, impropriety, and – not least – cunning.

Stated out loud, the question “Why were you born?” embodies both provocation and zen koan in its sly rhetorical merging of the threatening and affirmative. Blunt and direct as a ransom note, its tone seems to goadingly ask, “who do you serve?”, while taking breaks to stroke our hair as we luxuriate in the expansive. Similarly, the exhibition WHY WERE YOU BORN? attempts to strike a tone at once baldly declarative and perversely coded by consciously holding hierarchical notions of status in abeyance. Chastised into bold action but reclining in idle, WHY WERE YOU BORN? marks the rare occasion when legends straddle light-heavies and the baboon in estrus flanks the saffron tide pool.

August 31st, 2010 - October 6th, 2010