The Way We Do art Now

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The Way We Do art Now
‘The Way We Do Art Now’
2010
Installation view
Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, Germany
The idea of art as something one may ‘do’
rather than ‘make’ has its roots in the 1960s,
when Conceptual art turned art-making on its
head, allowing all sorts of unlikely practices into
its remit, like reading, writing, video-making,
performing or even happening. The title of this
exhibition, ‘The Way We Do Art Now’, is borrowed
from John Baldessari’s 1973 film, a spoof on
the endless possibilities of art practice in which
‘the birth of abstract art and […] probably the
beginning of how we do art now’ is described in
anecdotal form as occurring when an ancient
Roman wall painter threw a sponge at his painting in frustration, and through this act achieved
the effect he had been searching for.
The Way We Do Art (after John Baldessari)
(2010) is also the title of a work in the show
by UK-based Czech artist Pavel Büchler, who
curated the exhibition of 16 artists. The title is
painted in watercolour on a large piece of paper,
copied from the typed-out title as it appears in
Baldessari’s film. Reference, practice and subject
are all tied together in a tight conceptual knot
– characteristics that come up in many of the
works Büchler chose for this subtly thoughtprovoking show.
The exhibition opened during the fourth
edition of Berlin’s annual Gallery Weekend, a
coordinated opening of exhibitions at some 40
participating galleries, with many other galleries (including this one) organizing concurrent
events for the throngs of visitors descending on
the city. In the face of the prodigious scale of
this extravaganza, in which the great quantity
of art production and its attendant mediation
was a ready distraction from critical discernment, this exhibition posed pertinent questions
about the ways and means and, crucially, the
why of art making now. Though the works were
mostly modest in scale and execution, the show
possessed an ambitious concept and brought
together a tight if disparate collection of works
that mined a post-Conceptual vein, while resisting any notion of a separation between art
and life.
Method, medium and meaning converge in
many of the works. Jonathan Monk’s tautological
film Two Correlated Rotations (2004), a 16mm
film on a simple looping machine documenting
the construction of the very looping machine
itself, is like a filmic version of Robert Morris’
seminal Box with the Sound of its Own Making
(1961), whereby the medium seems to meditate
on its own origins. Morris’ legacy is also to be
found in the projection of Bruce McLean’s littleknown early film In the Shadow of Your Smile,
Bob (1970), where, in a spoken commentary,
McLean and a fellow Scot analyze the poses and
gestures of his filmed image, in a tongue-incheek Morris-esque mind/body disconnect. The
‘anything goes’ nature of Conceptual art is both
satirized and utilized.
Many works here have to do with the activities of everyday life. Amikam Toren’s Black Hole
(1997–2006), for instance, in which the artist’s
peeling of his daily orange becomes a way to
explore the spiral form, and the collection of ten
years of dried out, curving orange peels – shoved
into a bin bag and placed on the floor – becomes
a concentrated elegy about the passing of time
and the ongoing, quotidian nature of artistic
Dean Hughes
Embroidery Thread on a
London Bus Seat
1993–6
Framed photograph
28×21 cm
194 | frieze | June • July • August 2010
Frieze, Summer 2010
practice. Likewise, Dean Hughes’ embroidery
of the seat of the bus he took every day, subtle
to the point of invisibility, points to both the
normalcy, repetition and work-like quality of
‘doing’ art, but enhances these qualities so that
they themselves become the subject, paradoxically revealing their own potential and quiet
beauty (Embroidery Thread on a London Bus
Seat, 1993–6).
Amongst the most succinct works are Pierre
Bismuth’s Unfolded Origami – Lampion and
Unfolded Origami – Tortue (both 2003), a pair
of found posters, each showing a tropical island,
framed but still bearing the folded traces of their
previous incarnations as, respectively, origami
lantern and origami turtle. Thoughts about the
potential of found material, the creative impulse
to transform matter, the intellectual desire to
rationalize and object-image relations, gather
and dissipate around these light-footed works.
In this multi-generational exhibition, Büchler
is not concerned with discovering talents new or
old, but rather revealing the simple continuity
that the making of art involves, particularly in a
time when ‘artist’ seems to rank as a profession
alongside other conventional career choices.
With a welcome levity, it shows that being an artist is not an escape from everyday life so much
as a harnessing of it. As he does in his own often
physically unassuming but deeply considered
artworks, Büchler allows the works here to demonstrate the artist’s contemplation and probing
of the fabric of life. Despite its sometimes tautological appearance, this is not ‘art about art’, but
very much ‘art about doing art’.
Kirsty Bell
CHELSEA space
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
A question rehearsed by RUN
#31
CHELSEA space 5th Anniversary Exhibition
RUN with Bruce Mclean, David Gothard, Lisa Le Feuvre,
Teresa Gleadowe, Jo Melvin, Mick Jones, and guests.
Donald Smith
Director of Exhibitions
Chelsea College of
Art & Design
16 John Islip Street
London
SW1P 4JU
United Kingdom
Tel:
020 7514 6000
ext. 3710
Mobile:
07841 783 129
Email
[email protected]
Website:
www.chelseaspace.org
theCHELSEA
programme
12.03.10 – 17.04.10
Private Views:
11th, 18th, 25th of March and 1st, 8th of April 2010. 6 – 8.30pm
Should I Stay or Should I Go? is an exhibition curated by RUN
marking the fifth anniversary of CHELSEA space. It endeavours
to recapture some of the most salient moments of this short
history, as well as taking the opportunity to look ahead and
speculate about the future of CHELSEA Space.
Over the past five years, CHELSEA Space has constituted a
unique space where otherwise unrealised projects can be
discussed and presented and where the dialogue and processes
involved are fully exposed. Through the construction of Should I
Stay or Should I Go?, RUN wishes to highlight the self-exposing
character of CHELSEA Space’s curatorial processes and
reinvestigate existing enquiries and relationships in order to
convey a sense of their breadth, depth and magnitude. It also
aims to revisit the significance of the programme to date, as an
invaluable resource to both students and the general public in
re-presenting and assessing new extremely diverse and often
overlooked episodes of cultural activity and artist production.
Should I Stay or Should I Go? is organised into a series of five
‘acts’: Bruce Mclean & David Gothard, Lisa Le Feuvre, Teresa
Gleadowe, Jo Melvin, and Mick Jones, integral to the previous
shaping of the CHELSEA Space programme, have been invited to
curate one week of the exhibition consecutively for five weeks.
With concepts oscillating between re-enactment, performance
and rehearsal, mythologies of exhibition making, archiving, the
mapping of networks and collection, Should I Stay or Should I
Go? highlights the distinctive qualities that characterize
CHELSEA Space and serves to preserve and honour what is a
most fragile and ephemeral archive.
www.rungallery.co.uk
Through the exhibition there will be contributions, punctuations and
interventions from a range of individuals spanning disciplines. These will
include performance, design, and sound works.
For weekly events please check the website: www.chelseaspace.org
RUN Directors: Elena Crippa, Hana Noorali, Lynton Talbot
Chellseaspace Press Release, March 2010
Parfitt
Gallery
Press Release
Bruce McLean: A Book, A Print, A Poster, A Sculpture,
A Photo Work, A Film, A Model, A Vase, A School,
A Failed Project, A Pose, A Masterwork, A Painting,
A Text Piece and An Interview
4 October ~ 10 November 2010
Opening Party: 4 October 6:00~8:00pm
Excerpt from King for a Day, 1972
The Parfitt Gallery is pleased to present A Book, A Print, A Poster, A Sculpture, A Photo
Work, A Film, A Model, A Vase, A School, A Failed Project, A Pose, A Masterwork, A
Painting, A Text Piece and An Interview, an exhibition by Bruce McLean. Working across
a wide range of media, in a working life spanning more than 4 decades, this exhibition
brings together a collection of work that embodies the progressive and diverse nature of
McLean’s practice, becoming the embodiment of the list the title suggests.
From 1966 to 1985 McLean taught at what was then Croydon Art School, now the site
of the Parfitt Gallery in Croydon Higher Education College. He lectured on the Art &
Design Foundation Course, in the Sculpture Department and on an Environmental
Arts Course that remains an influence on him to this day.
The period spent in Croydon saw many changes in the work of McLean. In 1969 he
publicly declared to ‘give up art’ and established Pose, an experimental performance
group including Garry Chitty, Robin Fletcher and Paul Richards. Pose’s first public
showing was at Croydon Art School on a bill with Ian Dury’s Kilburn and the High
Roads. They would later support the Kinks at Maidstone College of Art and existed for
a while outside of the gallery space as a performance art pastiche of the rock bands from
the time, making deliberate connections between art and popular culture.
As a fore figure of Conceptual Art in Britain in the late 60’s early 70’s, questioning the
Parfitt Gallery
Croydon Higher Education College
Barclay Road, Croydon CR9 1DX
Telephone: 020 8686 5700 Ext: 3756
info: [email protected]
www.parfittgallery.croydon.ac.uk
Parfitt Gallery Press Release, November 2010
Parfitt
Gallery
Press Release
very nature of art became fundamental to McLean’s practice. He denied himself the
visceral pleasure of painting and drawing in this period, mediums that he would later
use as modes of expressive artistic production. Mel Gooding wrote: “During that period
he worked with impermanent structures and received materials, used photography as
a medium in itself or as a means to document transient works, made performances,
collaborated on texts, tapes, uncommercial films and videos, and maintained his
commitment to teaching.” McLean’s commitment to teaching saw him go on to
lecture at the Slade from 1985 where he would later become Head of Graduate Painting.
Bruce McLean won the John Moore’s prize for painting in 1985 and has exhibited
internationally throughout his working life, including: Process Perspective at Chelsea
Space, London (2008), New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy, London (1981),
Zeitgeist at the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (1982) King for a Day at the Tate Gallery,
London (1972) and New Work at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London (2009). He is
represented by Bernard Jacobson Gallery.
The Parfitt Gallery is located in the Higher Education building of Croydon College
that offers over 30 higher level courses through its Higher Education and its Skills
& Enterprise College. There are currently over 1,000 students on courses at Croydon
Higher Education College. For more information or to order a prospectus please
contact 020 8760 5914 or go to www.croydon.ac.uk
Michael Hall MA RCA
Parfitt Gallery Curator
Parfitt Gallery
Croydon Higher Education College
Barclay Road, Croydon CR9 1DX
Telephone: 020 8686 5700 Ext: 3756
info: [email protected]
www.parfittgallery.croydon.ac.uk
Bruce McLean is back with his first exhibition of new paintings in more than 20 years.
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McLean has exhibited extensively internationally, participating in such seminal exhibitions as New
Sprit in Painting at the Royal Academy, London (1981) and Zeitgeist at the Martin Gropius Bau,
Berlin 1982. In 1985 he won the John Moore's prize for painting and has been head of graduate
painting at the Slade for the last seven years. In 2006 he had a critically acclaimed retrospective (or as
he called it Process-spective) at Chelsea space during which he changed the content of the exhibition
on a weekly basis. However he has not shown a new group of paintings since his exhibition at the
now closed Anthony D'Offay gallery in 1986.
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Search
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Collectively entitled "The Black Garden Paintings", these works are abstracted paintings of his
gardens in Barnes and in Menorca, where he spends part of the year, and of his friend's garden also
in Barnes. Bright floral colour is contrasted with large areas of black, which add a sinister, polluted
cast to the expected beauty of the garden. In a subtle way these works continue McLean's long
running concern with environmental issues.
McLean retires this year as Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade, where he has taught since 1985.
His own interest in painting evolved during the '80s when he began to move away from imagemaking merely as a projection of his performance work. It was with performance that he had first
grabbed the attention of the art world. An impulsive, energetic Glaswegian, he became known as an
art world 'dare-devil' by critiquing the fashion-oriented, social climbing nature of the contemporary
art world in the '70s. At St Martins his tutors included the great sculptors of the day, Anthony Caro
and Phillip King, whose work he mocked ruthlessly. In Pose Work for Plinths I (1971; London, Tate),
he used his own body to parody the poses of Henry Moore's celebrated reclining figures, daring to
poke fun at the grand master himself.
The notion of using his whole body as a sculptural vehicle of expression led him to explore
performance: 'it was then that I invented the concept of 'pose' so that I could do anything'. Pose was
performance art: a cross between mime, theatre and sculpture and McLean created Nice Style 'The
World's First Pose Band', which performed for several years, offering audiences such priceless gems
as the 'semi-domestic spectacular Deep Freeze, a four-part pose opera based on the lifestyle and
values of a mid-west American vacuum cleaner operative'. Behind the obvious humour was a desire
to break with the establishment, something that he has continued to do throughout his life and work.
In 1972, for instance, he was offered an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, but opted, for a 'retrospective'
lasting only one day. 'King for a Day' consisted of catalogue entries for a thousand mock-conceptual
works, among them The Society for Making Art Deadly Serious piece, Henry Moore revisited for the
10th Time piece and There's no business like the Art business piece (sung).
Please join us for the private view, on Thursday 8th October, 6-8pm. The artist will be present. For
further information please contact Theresa at Theresa Simon & Partners 020 7734 4800
[email protected]
Website managed by Ministry of IT Ltd - Buisness IT Support London
Bernhard Jacobson Gallery Press Release, November 2009
http://www.monopol-magazin.de1039
Diesen Artikel drucken
Der lange Marsch in die Institutionen
Seit 40 Jahren spielt Performance eine zentrale Rolle in der intellektuellen, politischen
und ästhetischen Kommunikation. Doch erst jetzt reagieren die etablierten Häuser
darauf
von Peggy Phelan
erstellt am 29.09.2009
ls Maler, Bildhauer und Videokünstler sich stärker auf das Prozesshafte konzentrierten, feierte
auch die Performance ihren endgültigen Durchbruch. Das war in den 60er- und 70er-Jahren.
Dennoch haben Museen für zeitgenössische Kunst mehr als drei Jahrzehnte gezögert, Live-Art
in ihren regulären Betrieb zu integrieren.
Natürlich liegt für Häuser, deren kulturelles Kapital nach dem Wert ihrer Objekte bemessen
wird, etwas Masochistisches darin, nicht gegenständliche Arbeiten zu fördern. Und auch die
Präsentation und Konservierung flüchtiger Aktionen stellt ein Problem dar. Doch Performance
ist in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten derart dominant in der ästhetischen, intellektuellen und
politischen Kommunikation geworden, dass Museen sich ihr nur dann entziehen können, wenn
sie als Plattformen für Kunstvermittlung veralten wollen.
Viele Ereignisse führten zur grundlegenden Wende, das bedeutendste fand im November 2005
im New Yorker Guggenheim statt und hieß „Seven Easy Pieces“. An sieben
aufeinanderfolgenden Tagen führte Marina Abramovi´c sieben bahnbrechende Performances
für jeweils sieben Stunden wieder auf. Die Veranstaltung war ein enormer Erfolg: fantastische
Kritiken, wichtige akademische Diskussionen, massenhaft Zuschauer.
Als Serie von „Covers“ einflussreicher Live-Art konzipiert, wurde tatsächlich das Handwerk der
Künstlerin selbst vorgestellt. Von den Masturbationsschreien in Vito Acconcis „Seedbed“ (1972)
bis zu den Flammen unter Gina Panes eisernem Bett aus „The Conditioning“ (1973) –
Abramovi´cs Neuinsze- nierungen demonstrierten ihre eigene Vielseitigkeit, ihre Gerissenheit
und ihr großes Potenzial.
Mit einer Version von Bruce Naumans „Body Pressure“ (1974) startete die Serbin in ihre harte
Woche. Das Original bestand lediglich aus einem Zettel: eine Aufforderung an die Zuschauer,
sich an eine Wand zu pressen und dabei auf Muskeln und Gliedmaßen zu achten, die
Anspannung, den Schweiß, die Gerüche zu erspüren. Anstatt die Instruktionen wieder für das
Publikum auszulegen, drückte sich jetzt Marina Abramovi´c an eine Glasfläche, dem Konzept
gehorchend sieben Stunden lang. Und aus den Spuren ihres Körpers entstand ein
verstörendes Porträt.
Es erinnerte an den antiken Mythos von der Geburt von Malerei und Skulptur. Der römische
Gelehrte Plinius der Ältere erzählt ihn als Liebesgeschichte: Die Tochter des Künstlers Butades
von Sikyon malt den Umriss ihres Geliebten, der zu einer Seereise aufbricht, an eine Mauer.
Danach fügt der Vater dem Bildnis Ton hinzu und brennt es. Marina Abramovi´cs Aktion zeigte
beides zugleich, Naumans „Body Pressure“ befand sich nun irgendwo zwischen Gemälde und
Monopol, October 2009
Plastik, zwischen 1974 und 2005, zwischen Heldensage und Kunstwissenschaft.
„Seven Easy Pieces“ gelang die absolute Verschränkung der Gegenwart und der Historie von
Live-Art, aus der Neuinterpretation der sieben Partituren entstanden eigene, völlig neue Werke.
Außerdem verdeutlichten die Abende, dass die Wahrnehmung von Performance sich stark von
derjenigen anderer Kunstformen unterscheidet. Schließlich durfte das Publikum auch
beobachten, wie Abramovi´cs Konzentration und Energie schwankten, wie andere Zuschauer
den Raum betraten und verließen, wie die Geräuschkulisse wechselte. Es konnte die
Künstlerin sogar riechen.
Die Entscheidung des Guggenheim, Performance auf so spektakuläre Weise zu präsentieren,
signalisierte ein fundamentales Umdenken im Umgang mit dem ephemeren Genre.
Abramovi´cs Vorlagen hatten alle in kleinen Galerien oder Theatern stattgefunden, die
naturgemäß weder über die finanzielle noch die ästhetische oder kulturpolitische Macht des
großen Hauses verfügten – und also auch weniger Aufmerksamkeit bei Kritikern und
Dokumentatoren fanden.
Jede Sekunde von „Seven Easy Pieces“ wurde von einer Armee von Fotografen des
Guggenheim, der Sean Kelly Gallery, Abramovi´cs New Yorker Vertretung, sowie von der
Filmemacherin Babette Mangolte festgehalten. Gewollter Nebeneffekt: Eine Aufhebung des
reinen Momentcharakters – die Aktionen wurden in gewisser Form auch zu konkreten,
ausstellbaren Objekten.
Auch schlichtere Schauen haben zum Umdenken geführt. Die von Paul Schimmel kuratierte
Wanderausstellung „Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949–1979“ etwa
bewies 1998 am Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles die zentrale Rolle der
Performance für die internationale Nachkriegskunst. Die wissenschaftlich geprägte Schau
verschob den Schwerpunkt vom Gemälde aufs Malen an sich: Einige der teuersten Werke
überhaupt (wie die abstrakt-expressionistischen Leinwände von Jackson Pollock) erklärte
Schimmel auf diese Weise zu bloßen Relikten einer Aktion, des – wesentlicheren –
Schaffensprozesses.
Kunstgeschichte fetischisiert schon per definitionem die Vergangenheit, die ihr in Form von
Artefakten vorliegt, während sie die Gegenwart, also die Vergänglichkeit der Performancekunst
oder die Prozesshaftigkeit des Malens, außen vor lässt.
Diese prekäre zeitliche Orientierung bedeutet für Live-Art, dass ihre Historie kaum in den
Archiven fassbar wird, sondern die Performances wieder und wieder präsentiert werden
müssen. Mehrere Museen haben das schon vor dem Guggenheim mit Abramovi´cs „Seven
Easy Pieces“ erkannt.
In „A Short History of Performance“ (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002) realisierten Künstler
wie Carolee Schneemann, Stuart Brisley, die Kipper Kids, Hermann Nitsch, Bruce McLean oder
Jannis Kounellis ihre Arbeiten von früher. Und im Februar 2005 zeigte das Rotterdamer Witte
de With die Schau „Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art“, für die
Andrea Fraser, Robert Longo, Eran Schaerf, Catherine Sullivan und Barbara Visser eigene und
Performances von Kollegen inszenierten.
Aus theoretischer Sicht spricht für Remakes von Live-Art: So etwas wie eine „ursprüngliche“
oder „erste“ Aktion gibt es gar nicht. Die Wirkung beruht immer auf Proben, auf
Veränderungen, die sich währenddessen ergeben, auf den Bedeutungen, die, etwa durch das
Publikum, neu hinzukommen. Die „Seven Easy Pieces“ waren daher, streng genommen, nicht
nur siebenstündige Wiederholungen, sondern auch Reinszenierungen von Performances, die
selbst nie ein echtes Original hatten.
Deshalb fiel es auch nicht ins Gewicht, dass Abramovi´c die Werke (bis auf ihre beiden
eigenen) damals selbst nicht gesehen hatte. Wie die meisten von uns hatte sie sich durch
Fotos, Kritiken und Anekdoten ein Bild gemacht. Guggenheim-Kuratorin Nancy Spector mag
zwar beabsichtigt haben, mit der Auftragsarbeit an der Kunstgeschichte mitzuschreiben. Doch
letztlich handelte es sich – aus wissenschaftlicher Perspektive – um eine ahistorische
Ansammlung von Erinnerungsfragmenten mit variierendem Wahrheitsgehalt.
Museen befinden sich heute in einer Übergangszeit. Sie leiden unter dem Druck wachsender
ökonomischer Zwänge auf der einen Seite und der intellektuellen Ermüdung durch die in die
Jahre gekommenen Denkvorgaben der Postmoderne auf der anderen. Performance entfaltet
ihre besondere Kraft gerade in solchen Phasen. Denn sie verwischt die Linie zwischen dem
Leben und der Kunst wie kein anderes Genre.
In Japan erfanden die Mitglieder der Gutai-Gruppe Anfang der 50er einen Stil, der die
Beziehungen zwischen verletztem Individuum und von Atombomben verbrannter Erde
verarbeitete. Während der Revolten der 60er trat Live-Art einen Siegeszug von Prag über Paris
und New York bis nach Kalifornien an. Im Lauf der brasilianischen Militärdiktatur (1964–1985)
entwickelte sie sich zu einem Element politischen Widerstands.
Die Aidskrise in den 80ern resultierte auch in einer langen Reihe von Kiss-ins, Die-ins und
anderen Formaten. Immer wenn der menschliche und der gesellschaftliche Körper unter Druck
stehen, wenden sich Künstler verstärkt der Performance zu, um diesen zu kanalisieren. Der
Theoretiker John McKenzie beschreibt in seinem Buch „Perform or else“ Live-Art nicht umsonst
als prägend in der Philosophie, Geschichte, Wirtschaft und Kunst. Für ihn bedeutet
Performance im ausgehenden 20. und beginnenden 21. Jahrhundert, was für Michel Foucault
Disziplin im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert war: ein Feld menschlichen Handelns, das es uns erlaubt,
die Fundamente und Bruchlinien unserer Kultur zu verstehen.
Einen besonders geglückten Versuch, Ausstellungspraxis in Museen und Live-Art aufeinander
abzustimmen, unternahm die diesjährige, von Mark Rosenthal kuratierte Schau „William
Kentridge: Five Themes“ im Museum of Modern Art von San Francisco. Sie stellte die üblichen
Hierarchien zwischen der temporären Kunstform und der Institution Museum auf den Kopf.
Die Zeichnungen und Animationen waren in Szene gesetzt, als hätte man in den White Cubes
zwei kleine Theaterhäuser aufgebaut, in denen Performances geprobt werden. Der Künstler
wandte sich an eine „kommende Gemeinschaft“ im Sinne des Philosophen Giorgio Agamben,
er schuf einen kollektiven Glauben an eine künftige Erfahrung. Alle Kohlestriche der Skizzen
und Minifilme wiesen auf Kentridges Inszenierung von Schostakowitschs Gogol-Oper „Die
Nase“ hin, die nächstes Jahr an der New Yorker Met Premiere feiert.
Zeichnen war die erste Form der Live-Art für den Künstler. Die Tochter von Plinius’ mythischem
Butades zog mit ihrer wehmütigen Porträtlinie die gesamte Kunstgeschichte nach sich. Schon
jener Strich war auf ein Morgen gerichtet, sollte er doch die Rückkehr des Geliebten
vorwegnehmen.
Ähnlich verhält es sich nicht nur mit den Skizzen von William Kentridge, sondern auch mit den
Performances, die in den vergangenen Jahren häufiger in Museen zu sehen waren – und der
Gattung nun zu neuem Glanz verhelfen: Für den Zuschauer bilden sie den Zugang zu einer
Kunstgeschichte, die sich wieder und wieder in der Zukunft abspielen wird. Immer ein bisschen
außer Reichweite, aber auch immer bereits im Entstehen.
The Times Educational Supplement, 7 December 2007
Frieze, May 2006
Arts London News, 3 March 2006
Arts London News, 3 March 2006
Wonderland, February 2006
Time Out London, 8 March 2006
Valencia Biennal 2003
About this review
Various
Published on 10/10/03
By Martin Herbert
Valencia might fairly be considered a weird venue for a
hydra-headed, 150-artist expo, subtitled ‘The Ideal City’,
which purported to examine notions of enlightened urban
flexibility in the face of geo-political flux. Spain’s thirdlargest metropolis nurses an undercurrent of bedrock
conservatism that was manifested during the opening days of
this Second Valencia Biennial in newspaper editorials asking
why civic money was being spent on incomprehensible
contemporary art, and in protesters whistling an ‘antibiennial anthem’. Yawning gaps in the streets of Valencia’s
old-town sector - known as solares and a result of heavy
bombing during the war and a major flood in 1957 - have not
been filled in, despite extensive gentrification elsewhere.
Apparently the presence of myriad Roman ruins beneath the
city means that developers have to finance archaeological
digs before they can put up their penthouses.
The solares, however, turned out to be a gift for Biennial
director Luigi Settembrini and his team of curators:
outperforming most contemporary art in terms of
presence/absence dialectics, they served as backdrops to
installations by some 30 international artists. The former
interior subdivisions of these annihilated houses, readable
via the raw-brick outlines of long-gone floors and patches of
tiling, brought Clay Ketter to mind (which made Ketter’s own
delicate highlighting of brickwork with creamy paint appear
somewhat tautological). Some contributions looked faxed in:
hung high on a gorgeously scuffed wall, Gilbert & George’s
photo-grid showing chewing gum on London streets was
particularly unsympathetic. But others, such as Richard
Nonas’ ghostly battalion of salvaged lengths of oak beams,
placed in a rubble-strewn void and criss-crossed over each
other to suggest mounted cannon, synched productively with
the city’s history. Polly Apfelbaum, meanwhile, went for
straight-ahead beautification, overlaying a graffiti-covered
wall with a field of Warholian flowers in luminous paint that
glowed happily in the continental night. Such works
suggested that the ideal city would foreground a capacity for
aesthetic surprise.
Aside from Sebastião Salgado’s casually virtuoso parade of
monochrome portraits of Valencians in the glossy MUVIM
art space, proceedings elsewhere typically drifted into the
speculative ether. Will Alsop and Bruce McLean filled the
grand Convento del Carmen with The Department of Proper
Behaviour (2003) - a fabulously surreal take on the
Frieze Magazine, October 2003
Back to the main site
department store. Designed to re-enchant the nullifying
experience of shopping, and described as ‘a place to furnish
dreams’, it flaunted such attractions as a hair salon, a cocktail
bar, a ‘Department of Dance’ (with sprung dance-floor and
music by Gavin Bryars) and - a politically incorrect bone
thrown to confirmed sybarites - a darkened ‘Department of
Smoking and Film’, dotted with low-slung leather armchairs,
strafed by video projections and dispensing Chivas Regal and
Cuban cigars.
More soberly, the 41-participant show ‘microUTOPIAS’ (in
Reales Atarazanas, a cavernous 14th-century customs depot)
showcased scalable models of social change and, inevitably,
netted the usual art/architecture suspects: Atelier van
Lieshout with a car-cum-chicken run; Lucy Orta displaying
grey canvas outfits for symbiotic groups, connected to each
other by umbilical lengths of material; Frank Gehry with
plans for crumple-effect buildings. But there were also
contextually unlikely choices such as Mike Kelley, whose
maze of architects’ cubicles was covered with plans for
destroying a high school and iconographic references to Bob
Clark’s 1981 film Porky’s. Expansions of the theme also
incorporated the topography of the mind, particularly in
Branson Coates Associates’ Ecstacity (2002), a multi-screen
video in which young people dazedly describe their
excursions into a notional region that has so
comprehensively collapsed global travel that the Taj Mahal
might be situated in London’s East End, itself bleeding into
the Meatpacking District, which incorporates Red Square and
so on.
This proposal of psychological transformation felt more
achievable than many of the social housing projects planned
by 13 architects’ practices, to transform Valencia in the
maquette-and-slideshow extravaganza ‘Sociopolis: A Social
Project’. Housed in a former monastery, the projects shot
over budget in the interests of showiness and novelty and
included such mental smoke rings as Toyo Ito’s buildings
with fabric façades. Given that Valencia has citizens living
under newspapers in the solares, the presence of such gesture
politicking was awkward (those whistling protesters had a
point), as was the theme of ‘The Ideal City’ in the context of a
biennial that is transparently part of a running battle with
Madrid and Barcelona for top-Spanish-city status. Whatever
Luigi Settembrini’s hopes for an endlessly modular and
elastic urban habitat, there’s a certain irony in the fact that,
without the tourist-industry imperative that the ideal
21st-century city must have bars, beaches and a biennial, his
forum for such musings would not exist.
Martin Herbert
Frieze
3-4 Hardwick Street, London EC1R 4RB, 020 7833 7270
Building Design, 2002
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Sunday Herald, 30 January 2000
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London Art Review, 17 October 1974
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