Meet Matthew Cooke, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of February. Look for his reports daily on Slog and Line Out. —Eds.

There are times in the course of this “Yesterday” gauntlet when I suspect The Stranger is just flat-out fucking with me. My Friday task was to head downtown to Suyama Space, only open from 9am-5pm on weekdays—a tough window for a man with a full-time job.

Also, Suyama is literally right next door to the Rendezvous, where I was just the previous night for the Moon Duo show. Did they think this would be convenient for me, like I might fall asleep in the gutter outside the club and see the exhibit the next morning?

As luck would have it, I have the option of working downtown on Fridays; hence I had easy access to the gallery, despite its restrictive hours. I didn’t have to take a day off or anything. Take that, Stranger sons of bitches!

I’d never been to the space before; you actually have to buzz the proprietors via intercom at the entrance. Would I have to pass some kind of coolness test before they would allow me to enter? Happily, their standards are low and they let me in without a fuss.

At first glance, the installation looked like an overly ambitious arts-and-crafts project, a series of oval-shaped, cardboard cones and crude orange splotches. But then I stepped back and took the thing in from a distance. The cones suddenly merged into a collective. They had an unsettling sense of purpose, like they were primed to march out of the room and wreak havoc upon all that opposed them.

And then there was the Great Eye. Stationed by a massive, curving metal arm coming off the far wall, it hovers with profound authority, commanding its orange-eyed army with frightening omniscience.

It has a slightly retro feel to it, like something a futurist from the ‘60s might have envisioned. I thought of Kubrick’s sets from A Clockwork Orange; it would be easy to imagine this piece in the background of the milk bar, say, or decorating the home of one of Alex’s victims.

I liked it. Despite The Stranger’s determination to inconvenience me, the recommendation is too good for me to hold it against them. I encourage you to head downtown and take it in. You may find yourself ruminating on issues of individuality and control, symmetry and obedience. I don’t know much about art, as they say, but I know what I can ignore. And I couldn’t ignore this. Neither should you.