Klindt Houlberg, Barrelful, 1999, pine and steel installation

In his essay for this show, curator Tony Tasset describes his own mid-life crisis as "an existential funk; an acute awareness of one's own insignificance; the big D - disappointment; an emotional emptiness; Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" But his prognosis for the future is optimistic. "After life beats you up a little, and you experience a universe larger than your own ego, wonderful things begin to happen; an emotional loosening up, a new stop-and-smell-the-roses-attitude. If you have no expectations, life is a gift."

Hello Mr. Soul is an emotive meditation on the subject of men and aging, as described through the work of twelve male artists. The works were chosen by the curator not as didactic examples of a thesis, but for their evocative and emotional charges. They address issues of aging in a traditional romantic sense, embracing a whole range of feeling: hysterical and stoic, sensitive and crude, loving and mean. The result is a complex environment in which elusive aspects of male desire are revealed.