A Bad Idea, 2005

hand-cut adhesive shelf paper on wall, 184” x 75”

Eight visual modules form two vertical columns of hand cut paper adhered directly to the gallery wall spelling the words of its title. If scanned like a visual poem, attentive to rhyme and sequence, the piece would map like this:

AB

AD

I D

EA

Language is cheap and ubiquitous.  We use it to paper over the surface of our lives and to simulate the world we encounter in our perceptions. We acknowledge its ambiguities and have agreed to its deceptions. Bad can mean good and needs good to mean anything.  An idea is the creation of language, an abstracted reduction of experiential complexity, an icon easily degraded to sentiment, like

LO

VE

This piece, of course, is not an idea at all, but a thing. A bad idea, but a good thing.