“THE WE” Review by David Bryant

GARY KOTT’S THE WE AN EXHIBITION THAT IS NEARLY ABOUT US

There are seven and a half billion people on earth. Gary Kott has chosen thirty-six

of them for his new installation, THE WE. Actually, these are some uncounted

people. Here are lives, which he has unified by placing them together in an art

exhibit like no other. To begin, this piece is composed of the stark beauty of handpainted

legal pad sheets, three dozen of them, each glowing in a nearly black space

in his “warehouse.” In an industrial park. In Cathedral City, California. Then it gets

more complicated. Gary calls THE WE “a matrix of observers, microscopic,

undetected, that are inside every human being…” Most of us don’t know about that.

Gary had successful years in advertising, then writing for television, and now he

resides at a comfortable convergence of time and devotion to duty – trusting his

creativity in his unpredictable art. He seems to surprise himself. He keeps up the

pace every morning beginning early in a solitary task in his studio – making things

that nobody has ever made before. That could be his definition of his art but you

better ask him. He is productive and relentless.

THE WE may be a test these thirty-six disparate, invented people

did not know they were taking, a test of lives observed. Some did very poorly. But

Gary writes THE WE are watching us and his thirty –six from inside out and

revealing the lives on display in this highly original gallery of people, no longer

anonymous, people.  Most important, Gary Kott has literally invented thirty- six strangers in an

oddly beautiful gallery turned showroom of life’s possibilities. This is a floating world

of words in a stunningly dark but perfectly lit exhibit where all the eye can see are

yellow panels. He calls it all THE WE. He does not help us know who THE WE are

hiding inside us to observe, but he confirms that life is an obstacle course of

emotions and dare I say, fate. Gary invites us into a room like no other, separate

from our daily reality but full of the bits and pieces of other lives we see every day.

He lets us meet thirty-six people whom we have never known before. No small

creative feat in a dark “warehouse” in an industrial park in the California desert.