At one end of the images-in-a-room genre of aesthetic experience is the poster sale. It's pretty simple – you flick through until you find something that looks good and appropriately expresses you, with the caveat that it doesn't make you look too uncool. The intellectual toll is minimal. At the other end of the spectrum is Collective Gallery's current show, Adaptation.
In its current state, it occupies only a small room in the gallery. Yet 'dense' doesn't even begin to describe it. Don't worry though, this isn't 'dense' as in the polite byword for 'turgid snooze-fest I barely escaped alive'. Firstly, they provide seats. Such minimal consideration for viewer comfort shouldn't be so important, but it is. Because you're not constantly shifting foot-to-foot resenting the flamingo-like expectations the art world pushes upon you, the works themselves are the focus. Secondly, the works are visually and theoretically consummate.
Finally, and this is the most enjoyable part of the exhibition, the works are in fact only fragments of Adaptation's totality; each work is twinned with a performance, most of which are scheduled for late May. This means the work before you is incomplete or to be expanded on. Knowing this, the viewer is gifted with the breathing space to imagine how potential additions would alter what's in front of them. Both the works and their potential futures are, oddly, invigorated by the occlusion of their full nature. Which is why they haven't been described in this review - now go down to Collective, let your curiosity get the better of you.