Buddhists call it aversion or resistance. My father called it a pain in the ass. The instinctual dislike of something, of someone and we don’t particularly know why. Society, the act of coexisting with others is a pain in the ass or aversion or resistance. Have you ever seen someone with a hat that immediately makes you dislike both the hat and the person? I mean are you kidding with that stupid hat you stupid pretentious moron. How bout someone having their poodle trimmed to look like a Disney hedge? Or people playing frisbee next to you in Central Park and you are trying to tell your significant other that you are having an affair with a dental technician and the frisbee keeps falling on your goddamn blanket and you decide not to tell her. Here’s one: construction on a major highway at rush hour AND you see a couple kissing passionately in the car next to you as you’re stuck in traffic. How about someone having so much perfume on that you almost pass out in the lobby of your building. Car alarms, someone having one pant leg shorter than another, a body that’s so perfect you want to kill the person, a faint noise that sounds like a drip, drip , drip in the apartment next to you? Look there are a million things that are gnawing away at our peace of mind every damn day. Our job is to let it just pass through us and not judge it or attach to it like a good zen practitioner. Yea good luck with that. This exhibit explores the things that annoy us for whatever goddamn reason, some obvious, some quirkily our own problem. I myself don’t like seeing people toss pennies into a fountain. Screw that noise.
-Eddie Pepitone