Salad Days 2023

An accompaniment, or substitute for the main course, the Side Salad is a decentered, essential mixture—the art of the everyday. Personalised multiples: one for all, in a variety of colours and forms.

For Salad Days, the Occasionnale invited artists and critics to make and assemble artworks as an evolving composition and gathering.

Tossing aside the distinction between the audience and the artist, this exhibition might pose a number of questions. At what point is a work of art complete? What might be the relationship between two-dimensional image and three-dimensional object, instruction and inspiration, original and multiple, agency and enclosure, production and representation (mic drop). And, where do we locate failure or success in a project like this?

The open-ended nature of the exhibition and hands-on exploration of cutting, pinching, rolling, slicing, modeling, burning, and improvised actions might create an environment which becomes a generous host, accommodating sculptures made from humble materials that are ubiquitous, nearly to the point of invisibility in everyday life—paper, pigments, clay, vegetables and studio detritus flourish as expressive and conceptual ideas and forms.