This is Very Simple. Who Wouldn’t Be Able to do It?

“Create a straight line on a grass field with your steps. This is very simple. Richard Long did it. Anyone can do it again.” 

——Eric Watier

Is the process of making an art piece better the more complicated it is? French artist Eric Watier, in his artist book Plus c’est facile, plus c’est beau: prolégomènes à la plus belle exposition monde, exposes the myth of judging a work of art by its technical complexity; through plain words and a repetitive sentence structure, he reiterates the process of how 89 contemporary artworks were made. If “simple” is a characteristic of contemporary art, then do artists who bear this characteristic share similar creative ideas? Or is it the opposite, that their modes of thinking are actually more different? This is Very Simple. Who Wouldn’t Be Able to do It? brings together the “simple” works of seven artists. With these works’ concrete presence in the exhibition space, this exhibition resonates with This is Very Simple. I Can Do It Too, a video artwork currently exhibiting at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei. The latter adapts the sentence structure of Watier’s artist book to describe Taiwanese contemporary artists born in the 70s and 80s. In the work, artists are invited to describe the simple production process of each others’ works using this sentence structure, hinting at the opposite—that the works may look simple but the ideas behind them aren’t necessarily simple:

        Draw a line on the wall, from the ceiling to the ground. This is very simple. Chih-sheng Lai did it. I can do it too.

        Install some fluorescent tubes onto the ceiling of the exhibition site. This is very simple. Yu-Cheng Chou did it. I can do it too.

       Film a cloud and make it float around in an old house. This is very simple.  

        Ya-hui Wang did it. I can do it too.

        Use the Bliss of Microsoft Windows as the background to which a male golfer is added. Wan-Jen Chen did it. I can do it too.

        Attach 3 rolls of 3M tape in red, black and blue on the wall and draw obliquely 3 parallel straight lines. This is very simple. Ming-Hsueh Lee did it. I can do it too.

        Transform a cradle into a fence, or a fence into a cradle, so that it can swing back and forth. Joyce Ho did it. I can do it too.

In the work, the artists repeatedly restate sentences that refer to each other; through alternating between the identity of an artist and a speaker and switching the artwork in discussion, the work outlines the characteristics of a certain mode of artistic conception of a time. The chatty and disorienting speech serves to loosen the intimate co-dependent relationship between author and artwork. The exhibition This is Very Easy, Who Wouldn’t Be Able to do It? is an extension of this video work, corresponding to the works that are repeatedly referred to in the video but aren’t present. Not only as a materialization of the referred objects, this exhibition also explores the underlying multi-directional connections between different artistic creation and thought processes and the possibility of a symbiosis of creative conception and curatorial practice. The participating artists and artworks include Yahui Wang’s Visitors, Joyce Ho’s Balancing Act, Yu-Cheng Chou’s TOA Lighting, Ming-Hsueh Lee’s Multiple Identity, Kuang-Yu Tsui’s The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: City Spirits, Wan-Jen Chen’s Good morning Bill, and Chih-Sheng Lai’s Two White Paintings.