Tony Labat's exhibition Bulk opened to throngs of art students, smoking and drinking on the sidewalk. At first, the event seemed like any other gallery reception. However, as a show focusing on the manifestation of social relations in an art event, the students hadn't come to see anything in particular, but to rather simply be with one another. With the gallery's main space converted to a bar, complete with amateur bartenders, swill cocktails at criminal prices, and makeshift wooden tables; Bulk turned Queens Nails Annex into a speakeasy, one built like a cheap theatrical set. Wheat-pasted on the gallery walls are lines of text on that evoke the subject headlines of spam email, such as "You can get a bigger erect member", "Viagra no dr visit needed", "Alexis wants you to see her new toy", and "Thanks, we are accepting your refinancing debt request". With the sexuality of the words made tepid by their bulk anonymity, they surround the participants in the exhibition, seeming to privilege the gallery as a place where social connections can be made that thrive amid the morass of meaningless communications in our daily lives. In this setting, Labat interfaces with the viewer through a calendar of social exchange that ranges from late-night poker and domino tournaments, performance nights, movie screenings, and private dinners. Perhaps some readers participated, as we did, and contributed their time into the labor of the work. We also heard the humorous, gossipy, and ribald accounts from our friends and acquaintances.

The show's premise expands the focus of most openings - socializing and drinking- into the fundamental fabric of the exhibition, sparking the all too common discussion about partying and fashion being the driving forces of contemporary art. The idea that the construction of exhibition, and subsequently art history, are largely facilitated by social networking and inebriation is neither new nor revelatory. Situating these events in a gallery context adds little to their meaning or enjoyment. In this redundant and flimsy play with relational aesthetics, it's apparent 'the emperor has no clothes'. Without any critical development, Bulk comes off as just another party. The events remain formal and literal, fully lacking the agitation, objection, and contestation that make social practice such a spark of possibility. Bulk's events have drawn together those who share in a common perspective - art students, gallerists, curators, etc.- participating in their prescribed roles of social exchange and power dynamics, as if the events had a written script. The exhibition doesn't challenge itself to compose the audience, who provide its labor, or translate their efforts into meaning. Any examination into the relationship between the mechanics of audience as a means of production, and how it conditions the possibilities of interpretation, is absent. Without intervention, the events emerged as expected; codified and rigid. Creating work that fosters social relations shouldn't reduce an event to the calling together of a coterie, turning the artist into a socialite of aesthetics whose practice would be a chain of well-hosted shin-digs. Bulk is emblematic of this festivalist, lackadaisical attitude that's far too common in contemporary art.

As Bulk extends into the month of December, cleverly overlapping a second solo exhibition at Galerie Paule Anglim, the aims and principles of the exhibition have become apparent. It's an extraordinary stunt, a collision of wishful thinking, brash marketing, and personal bravado, displaying the kind of risky management contemporary art now unabashedly demands. The move has caught many eyes, as both exhibitions have drawn celebratory reviews, reaffirming Labat's position as one of San Francisco's foremost artists. It would be easy to applaud Bulk's aggressive stylings, but an art exhibition that employs you and your friends as its sole means of production reveals itself as a lazy studio practice. While Labat's local hero status has certainly kept the events lively, it's unfortunate that the activities that compose Bulk actually work best at home or in your local pub, without the social practice script muddling your beer. We certainly don't want to discredit Bulk as a valid work of art, but there's the feeling of an endgame in this manner of practice. It is one thing to be widely permissive in exhibition-making, but it is entirely another to let practice drift into a state of post-critical atrophy.

Written by Marc LeBlanc and Brian Andrews