This work begins with the notion of the ‘fly on the wall.’ This metaphor for the unnoticed observer, who nonetheless sees everything, is transformed by the artist into a silent gesture of participation. Releasing three flies into an exhibition space during a group show opening, the artist has, similar to releasing a goldfish into a pond at the Met, in a sense introduced an additional work into the show while remaining thoroughly undercover. The artist skirts a fine line here between an affirmative evasion of his authority by eschewing recognition in the gallery circuit on the one hand, and a self-mythologizing impulse on the other. Emerging out of the social situation of the opening, the work exists as a myth or a rumor, shrouded in mystery and living on beyond the bounds of the exhibition to which it parasitically attached itself.
