The Art of Obsession

continued

keep it to yourself? Tell a friend? See a psychologist?

Chris Schneider seems to suffer from this quirk, and he's made his own cure in his "Red Pants Project," a series of 382 snapshots of people wearing red pants. It's one of 27 works in Obsession, on display through April 12 at Gallery Project.

Individually, the shots suck: the photography's often blurry, with haphazard compositions and no attention to white balance, not to mention subtlety. They're simply records of the artist's compulsion. But when put together, in a dizzying wall of neat rows, they form something awe inspiring: an archive--measured, organized, deeply satisfying--of one small slice of this person's experience (a major raison d?etre, one could argue, of the blogosphere). I was surprised to find the artist has priced the photos to sell separately, or in small groups. They have very little aesthetic value on their own, and I doubt someone would buy just one--even if it were a Picasso (or maybe especially if it were a Picasso, considering the recent Yves Saint Laurent auction debacle).