Here was my confusion: upon hearing hip hop artist and producer Timbaland’s 2007 single “The Way I Are”, and being taken in by one of his usual, catchy hooks, I couldn’t adequately repeat the name of the song to anyone to whom I wished to communicate my appreciation of it. Eventually I discovered that what I first thought was my brain and mouth’s inability to recreate this grammatically challenging proposition was in fact the distance between the song’s chorus, “the way I’m are”, and its title, “The Way I Are.” But my lack of facility with the name of the song only added to my pleasure in it, and the allure it had for me. Trying again and again to communicate “the way I’m are” regularly resulted in a pleasing, momentary inability to speak at all, and at the same time, presented a phrase I desperately wanted to be able to repeat. It is this moment of allure and openness that is contained in all of the works in this exhibition. Working in sculpture, painting, digital photography, video, sound and print, Valerie Blass, Anthony Burnham, Robert Fones, Martin Golland, Jen Hutton, Kelly Jazvac, John Massey, Elizabeth McIntosh, Planningtorock and Tony Romano all present the viewer with propositions that encapsulated each artist’s investigations into formal and conceptual concerns that extend and open up the lexicons of art.

—Katie Bethune-Leamen