In March of 2012 I was invited to do a project in the yet unopened Family Business exhibition space by the artist Marilyn Minter who was in turn invited to curate a month of programing for the inaugural month of Family Business by the space’s founders, artist Maurizio Cattelan and curator Massimiliano Gioni. 

Family Business is quite a small gallery space, maybe just about 12ftx8ft, with approximately 15ft high ceilings. Essentially a closet. Of course in viewing how small the “gallery” was I was naturally drawn toward the perverse idea of ramming it full of art. So, utilizing Hennessy Youngman as a vehicle of promotion, I made a Call for Entries video in which I stated that any art dropped off at Family Business during the 3 day drop-off window would be in my exhibition Itsa Small, Small World.

I think I wanted to create an exhibition of this sort for a few reasons, primarily, and as I stated earlier, for the perversity of the idea, which entailed the chaos that such an “exhibition” would look like. In my initial conceptualization of the Itsa Small, Small World exhibition, I pictured the show as an “art pile”, the gallery would be filled from floor to ceiling with people’s art and there would be no way to actually enter the space. As people began dropping their work off, and I began meeting the participating artists, I was struck by the wide demographic of folks who were submitting, not just the proto-typically young “artist types” but artists in their 80’s, children who’s parents collaborated with them on a project just for the show, the ever present art student of NYC, some NYC bigwigs,  artists from regions surrounding the city, artists who drove down from Canada, drove up from the south, artists who mailed work in from England, Italy, and Japan, and artists who for one reason or another couldn’t catch a break in NYC. After meeting these folks I felt a responsibility to their work, to not use them to create a conceptual “art pile that documented the over saturation of the New York Art World blah, blah, blah…” or whatever bullshit I had originally conceived, but to give these artists a platform past the Great Wall of 10th Ave. (or at least try dammit)

Another reason for putting on such an exhibition was born out of a curiosity to see what the audience for my Hennessy Youngman videos looked like, to basically see what the internet could look like in physical manifestation. A simple curiosity. Having an internet-based art project such as the ART THOUGHTZ videos really casts a veil of anonymity upon ones audience. You lack the face-to-face contact that is available with other forms of art production and exhibition.

Before I finish, I have to thank 3 very special people who, if not for them, Itsa Small, Small World would never have been installed. Sarah Workneh who literally had to pick me up off the floor in many a moment of instillation panic, Nataliya Slinko who must be part lemur because she would be hanging off all types of precarious surfaces while installing, and Tommy Coleman whose indefatigable energy never waned in what can easily be considered a nightmare installation scenario by any sane art preparator.

Oh, last but not least: ARTIST LIST

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Actually, this video by James Kalm does a better job of showing the opening than the photos.