Classic Fake-Out : Joshua Schwebel at Articule

In 2012, articule, a long-standing artist-run centre in Montréal, received a dossier responding to its annual programming call from Toronto-based artist Micah Lexier. Lexier’s proposed artwork — a newspaper offered free to gallery visitors — was accepted by articule and slated to be exhibited alongside the work of Samantha Kinsley. Both Kinsley and Lexier proposed work made with paper, and beyond this material link their work had a thematic similarity. While the committee agreed that Lexier’s proposal seemed somehow incomplete, they conceded that based on the artist’s previous work, and the fact that it would be presented alongside Kinsley’s large-scale sculpture, the risk of programming it was minimal. After all, Micah Lexier is an important and well-respected Canadian artist.

Shortly following the decision by the programming committee to accept Lexier’s dossier, Julie Tremble, articule’s programming coordinator, received a letter from Joshua Schwebel, an emerging Montréal-based artist, stating that they had, in fact, been fooled, and that Lexier himself had never applied to the centre. Schwebel had proposed a fake project to articule under Lexier’s name as a means to investigate whether “reputation would outweigh a really weak proposal.”¹ 1 - “Josh Schwebel’s Anti-Social Practice,” Blouin Art Info, accessed March 11, 2014, http://ca.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/988517/interview-josh-schwebels-anti-social-practice. The show went on at articule, but instead of the proposed project by “Lexier,” Schwebel presented a work about reputation and quality within artist-run centres, in conversation with Lexier himself.