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The Setup

The Setup

THE SETUP, 2026
Plywood and stock materials; interactive installation

The Setup is a folly about a drawing about the contract between the course and its players. Every folly lays out its rules, and most reward skill. The Setup instead asks how much of play depends on trust: is the game cruel or generous? Which game are you playing? Inside, alternative paths open: the ball may return, get stuck, change color, or only sound out what the rules could be. Built provisionally from stock materials and recalling René Magritte’s surrealist mind traps, the piece is part unresolved sketch, part Rube Goldberg machine. Players decide the rules of success.

Formally, the piece begins with the architectural move of elevating the ground above the players’ heads: a hidden mini landscape with three golf holes forms the roof of the structure.

Shown as an interactive, temporary installation in THE LAWN OPEN, a juried group exhibition staged as a playable nine-hole public mini-golf course at The Lawn, Bridgeport, Chicago, summer 2026. Chicago Reader Review, July 31, 2026.

The mini-golf course on the lawn, with The Setup at the far end by the fence
The Setup, a tall plywood box standing on the lawn beyond the mini-golf holes
The Setup: a tall plywood box on short legs, with a small hole and a handwritten word
Close-up of the plywood: the word 'drawing' handwritten with an arrow to the ball hole
Looking up a corner of the plywood box from the grass
The underside of the box, raised on short legs just above the grass