Messin With You, at YARDS Projects

“I can’t stand art actually. I’ve never, ever liked art,” said internationally-renowned artist David Hammons. And when asked “why do you make it?”

His response: “…Because art is about symbols, and outrageously magical things happen when you mess around with a symbol.”

The lineup of artists in Messin’ with You at YARDS Projects play to the spirit of Hammons, where the origins of their work arise from found and unexpected non-art materials or a deviation of unorthodox preconceptions of it being art in the first place. The work in this exhibition features mathematical and science experiments and operations, including impossible realities, explorations of infinity, tessellations, optical trickery and other conceptual shenanigans.

The artists—Dana Depew, Michelle Droll, Scott Goss, Hui-Chu Ying, Natalie Lanese, Shannon Morris, Debbie Apple-Presser and Steve Presser, Ed Raffel, Stephen Tornero, Anderson Turner, Gregory Scott, Gwen Waight, and Tony Williams—prefer the scientist-meets-tinkerer aesthetic with a side order of folly, mind-bending and risk-taking as part of their practice. All of these artists test things out in a combination of playfulness, irreverence, and gutsiness while simultaneously employing a wit and curiosity that jokes, messes with our minds and creates a blur between our understanding of art, reality, and taking ourselves too seriously.