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Merlin Carpenter is a tactician, skilled in exploiting the critical leverage points of artistic production--fabrication, exhibition, publication, administration, reception, exchange. However, his is not a historical critique of institutions. Rather, presuming no institutional resistance and citing the lack of commonly held criteria for understanding a work of art, Carpenter fabricates exhibition structures in order to operate. Traditional sites of display such as galleries and kunsthalles are treated as sites of primary production--theatrical stages with players, props, and gestures wherein rehearsal begins only once the curtain has risen.
