“Finley and Muse, using their material with a powerful simplicity and a perfect sense of timing, leave plenty of room for the viewer’s own memories, emotions and conclusions.” —Maria Porges, Art in America, 2001
“Anachronistic as the style of the ‘Blacky’ test is, the sense of entrapment it generates seems up-to-the-minute.” —Kenneth Baker, SF Chronicle, 2001
The Adventures of Blacky is an installation work based on a series of drawings of a family of dogs used as a projective test in the 1950’s. In the middle of the room, caught between opposing projections of slides and evocative video, a wooden school chair sinks into a large pile of pencil shavings. While the video projection shows toy animals tumbling in a spinning barn, a woman poses a series of test questions such as, “Here Blacky is licking herself. What might Blacky be thinking about here?” The Adventures of Blacky situates the viewer between the menace of an exam and the visual associations of a test subject.