Curated by Peter Eleey

With “The Talent Show,” curator Peter Eleey continues to forge his unique brand of piquant apperception. Reflecting on authorship, surveillance, and the ambivalent status of the participant, he assembles some twenty-five performance based works—classics by artists such as Stanley Brouwn, Adrian Piper, and Gillian Wearing, as well as newer creations by the likes of Phil Collins. Title aside, “talent” has nothing to do with it. The success of the work here, more often than not, is contingent on context. A case in point is Graciela Carnevale’s 1968 action in Rosario, Argentina—photographs of which will be on display—during which she locked guests at her show’s opening into the gallery and went home. (They eventually escaped through a broken window.) Aesthetics at its knotty, hostile best: It would be a coup if the Walker reprised it.

— David Velasco