This Will (Not) Be Easy | 2020

Designers: Eric Heiman, Adam Brodsley, Jon Hioki, Allier Ho, Ellie See, Nicole Sorci, and Yuya Yoshida, Volume Inc., San Francisco, California, USA
Manufacturer: Bolivar Art Gallery, University of Kentucky College of Fine Arts, Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Pinterest, Instagram, and other visual-rich platforms that we scroll through barrage us with pristine, perfectly photographed results of creative toil. But rarely do they show the philosophy or blood-sweat-and-tears process that goes into getting to that point. Could our exhibition be the antidote to this?

The result was This Will (Not) Be Easy. Where one would expect to see the actual work first and foremost with the philosophy and process reduced to wall text, our exhibition reverses that hierarchy. Instead, it’s a snapshot of all the thinking and making that goes into the final product.

Hung in the center of the gallery, a long banner holds a collection of single typeset sentences that describe a key concept for each project. These finished works can only be viewed through an augmented reality app on one’s smartphone. The visitor focuses their phone on the text and the project image (or series of images, or a video) is
displayed on the screen.

The gallery walls are covered with a process “wallpaper” made of single tabloid-sized sheets of orange paper. Each wall section at the macro scale highlights the philosophy that informs our process, no matter what the project. At the micro scale are the numerous sketches and notes created to realize the final work, as well as inspirational quotes that have informed our process from the beginning.

One of the performative components in the exhibition is a communal “tenet wall” of giveaway RISO prints intended for visitors’ homes or workspaces as creative inspiration. Also included were blank prints for the audience to contribute their own creative rule to our dozen or so already on the wall.

We conceived the exhibition as a snapshot of our studio’s psyche. If the banner is our “ego” (the real) and the walls our “superego” (our conscience), what is the irrational “id”? In a small room, we projected two videos on opposite walls that deconstruct our work into abstract strips of content, accompanied by a John Cage-ian soundtrack of ambient noise recordings from our studio layered on top of each other. Three sets of headphones dangle in the center of the room. Each set plays a separate recorded monologue that speaks about our creative approach and asks the listener a question to apply to their own creative process, providing the only linear and rational respite from the room’s otherwise sensory assault.