Simon Barney : Christopher Dean

Simon Barney No Ideas Front Room, Sydney AS STUPID AS A CURATOR It would be hard to imagine a politician or a hairdresser boasting about their own stupidity. If they did the scenario might be as follows: "I'm a politician and I've got no idea how to run this country" or "I'm a hairdresser and I've forgotten how to do a perm". A world consisting of unresolved government policies and bad hair-do's would be the obvious result. In contrast to this painters often like to boast about their own stupidity. The steady decline of the status of painting in capitalist economies goes part of the way towards explaining this trend. Andy Warhol would often request that interviewers provide him with both questions and answers. This strategy of active passivity allowed artists such as Warhol to reclaim their lost sense of cultural authority. Simon Barney takes this level of 'critical stupidity' one step further by insisting that other artists provide him with instructions for paintings because as he claims in an artists statement "I have no ideas of my own". The result is a show titled 'No Ideas' which was recently held at an independent gallery called Front Room. For this exhibition Barney contacted six artists with the request that they each provide him with ideas about what he should paint. This information formed the basis for six abstract and figurative paintings in both oil and acrylic which formed the basis of the exhibition. To prove his well developed sense of stupidity the oils were not allowed sufficient time to dry and entrapped the lustful fingers of visitors like flies in ointment when they touched the works at the opening. In keeping with the spirit of this exhibition the six artists who supplied ready made ideas are not listed in this review because No Ideas is an attempt to demonstrate that even if a curatorial concept is devoid of ideas it is always perceived as being more important than the original concept of an individual artist. Christopher Dean