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Covering an event on the scale of AAF, it is rare to encounter an exhibitor and strike an immediate rapport and sense of community. Please read on, we think Steven Wolf's upcoming gallery show will be the hot topic around here for some time to come - The Editiors

Now at AFF Contempory Art Fair , NY, NY
booth 228

press release

A Project by Steven Hull
AB OVO
Nov, 3 2005 - Dec 24, 2005Z

“Ab Ovo” is a multi-media visual arts project organized by Steven Hull, an Oakland-based artist known for designing and setting in motion grand conceptual undertakings in which large numbers of artists collaborate often blindly to create odd, fresh and often startling results.

Hull was inspired by his two children for “Ab Ovo” or “From the Egg,” and chose to use the children’s story as the goal and framework for the show. Nineteen visual artists, including Bruce Yonemoto, Mike Kelley, Glenn Ligon, Jim Shaw, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly and Inka Essenhigh, were given the MMPI-2TM (Minnesota Multi Phasic Personality Inventory). The test, developed over 60 years ago, remains the most widely used measure of pathology by the U.S. legal system. Customized for child custody settings, the tests produced personality profiles which were anonymously and randomly assigned to nineteen writers, including Benjamin Weissman, Leslie Davis and Trinie Dalton. They were in turn asked to base children’s stories on them. The stories were then illustrated by a second group of 19 visual artists including Paul Noble, Ivan Morley, Kaz Oshiro, Ion Birch, Paul P and Marnie Weber.

The gallery installation will feature the illustrations, an audio track of the writers reading their stories, and a picnic table designed by Dewey Ambrosino at which viewers can sit while they peruse the test results, which have been made anonymous.

The tests, stories and illustrations are being published under the title “Catalogue Raisonne: Ab Ovo,” with a forward by Hull and an introduction by Susan Morgan.
Hull’s interest in artistic collaborations animated by chance dates back to his first large project, conducted in 1997, called “Blind Date.” For that enterprise he asked 31 artists to produce a work of art. Those were then anonymously distributed to 31 writers, each of whom was asked to write a response. The collaborators met for the first time at the opening resulting in volatile and humorous situations.

In 2002, Hull produced “Song Poems,” a massive collaboration in which a large group of writers, amateur and professional, wrote poems, which were then given to song writers who made recordings which were then given to visual artists who made videos and album covers. It was documented in a three-cd box set with a startling amount of good material that both aped and mocked the conventional music industry’s system of production and distribution.
In addition to his work as a conceptual facilitator, Steven Hull has exhibited internationally as a painter and sculptor. He has had recent one-person shows at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, and Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco. He currently lives in Oakland with his two children Issac and Violet.
Complete documentation of the art work and stories in Ab Ovo can be found at stevenhulldrawings.com

Steven Wolf Fine Arts
49 Geary Street, Suite 411
San Francisco, CA 94108
415 263 3677

Project by Steven Hull ©

Please look for our interview with the artist in the December issue

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