'Around around Everyday'
Adobe Books, Through May 28

EMILY PRINCE'S INSTALLATION at Adobe Books' Backroom Gallery, "Around around Everyday," demands patience. The piece is defined by a note pinned to the wall outside the gallery. It reads, "I will add new lines to the work everyday that the show is up." By the time I saw it, Prince had painted 12 or 13 lines in blue, red, and gold around the perimeter of every wall in the room. She has constructed frames around empty white walls, calling attention – in the absence of any obvious art object – to the work as a process. The installation raises considerations of space, time, and labor. It brings to light the little, funny shape of the gallery and, by refraining from filling the room with objects, holds it open as a space for reflection and social interaction. On account of the progressive character of the piece, the lines read as measures of time devoted to the work so far, and time remaining to fill the walls. Like John Cage's silent piece, 4' 33," the installation thematizes the passage of time as itself the medium of artwork and, by extension, the substance of existence. (Apparently the work was inspired in part by Camus' The Plague.) However, the piece is not merely formal or abstractly existential. The white walls are being filled specifically with red, blue, and gold, colors chosen not only for visual effect, but also, as a somewhat heavy-handed allegory, to present the marriage of the American flag (red, white, and blue) with the pursuit of wealth for wealth's sake (gold). Closing in around the room, they stage the reduction of all experience to commodity exchange and the political coercion this entails. While laying claim to time and space by painting the gallery itself, Prince also has reclaimed her labor power from this hegemony of capital to entertain her fascinations with the world and, in the process, to change it. The work left me with the ambivalent feeling of both resisting the exhaustion of the white walls with lines and looking forward to seeing further results of Prince's deliberately drawn-out labors. Daily, Noon-10 p.m., 3166 16th St., S.F., (415) 864-3936. (Clark Buckner)