In August 2007, Mark Jenkins wrote about this exhibit as part of a longer review for The Washington Post:

At local art galleries, August is the month for group shows, often grouped thematically. One of the current exhibitions, Project 4's "Useless," offers an interesting angle on the gaps between the aesthetic and the practical, and the singular and the mass-produced. Indirectly, it also provides a possible way at looking at some of the other group displays in town.

For much of human history, the very notion of "Useless" would have been inexplicable. All art had a purpose, whether it was to be decorative, glorify God or simply flatter a patron. But as art became pure self-expression, and then increasingly conceptual, a divide developed between the artist and a world awash in consumer products. In a sense, all modern art became useless.

In "Useless," artists pay rueful tribute to architecture and industrial design by making objects that look as if they ought to be purposeful but aren't. Pull David Ruy and Karel Klein's "Wallpaper Furniture" off the wall and it could almost be a sled. Its red tendrils have the sleekness of an object that's meant to move but a shape that's designed for, well, nothing practical.

Some of the pieces emulate, alter or parody real things, often furniture. A bed frame hangs by threads, as if snared by a giant spider; three molded plastic forms in shades of black and gray seem to almost be seats; and decorative "books" in a stack feature mirrored covers and spines. The show's exemplary entry, Mark Wentzel's "Xlounge," bloats a leather Eames chair and ottoman until they lose their relaxation factor. A cat or perhaps a kid could perch here, but an adult would find no comfort.

Benjamin Jurgensen's "From Nothing to Less Than Something" (which could have been the show's title) is a yellow pump attached to a lime-green tricycle. The bright colors suggest plastic, the ultimate consumer material, but this toy of a toy has to settle for being painted wood. Almost a century after Marcel Duchamp first exhibited his "ready-mades" -- everyday items transformed simply by being placed in a gallery -- high art is still a little in awe of the manufactured object.

"Useless" includes Cory Ingram's packaging and poster for a macho fragrance called "Crude," which seems to contain crude oil.

In August 2007, Jessica Dawson wrote about this exhibit as part of a longer review in The Washington Post:

If Flashpoint offers architecture with a social conscience, Project 4 presents the discipline at its most coolly theoretical. Called "Useless," this group exhibition includes the kind of work architects produce after clients go home. Tooling around with the computer programs and machines of their real-world practice, they make things without real-world application. In other words, they make art.

The art that they make comes with a risk: If architects slip into the shallow waters of form and divorce their product from function, they encounter the problem too many artists face every day: They make something gorgeous but empty. The uneven "Useless" illustrates the successes and failures of their undertaking.

Take David Erdman's computer model video describing an elaborate water and light element -- one that might one day stand outside an important building but as yet has no actual client. At first, the elegant model proves compelling to watch. Form unfolds and retracts, water sprays and light shines, all from an organic spine made from what looks like interlocking dinosaur vertebrae.

But soon visual pleasure gives way to a pressing concern. Namely: So what? An architect's greatest strength evolves from his own constricting parameters: The discipline is both a logic problem and an aesthetic one. Without those limits, meaning can get lost.

A smart architect invents his own constraints. Here, Mark Wentzel uses an iconic mid-20th-century Eames chair to meditate on the mercurial nature of aesthetics. Wentzel inflated the sleek chair to Rubenesque proportions. By doing so, he's imposed one era's aesthetics on another's, underscoring the protean nature of beauty. His piece works because it's gorgeous and smart.

In recent years, so many artists have entered design and architecture in order to tap those disciplines' real-world applications. Here, architects reach toward art. Is it better to retain use value or to exist outside the economy of usefulness? At Project 4, the answer isn't clear.