… the institution may overshadow the work that it otherwise highlights: it becomes the spectacle, it collects the cultural capital, and the director-curator becomes the star.
- Attributed to Hal Foster in Claire Bishop’s “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
- Sol LeWitt in “Sentences on Conceptual Art”
The
mid-20th century conflict between the Abstract-Expressionist and the
mechanical Conceptualist is well known by now. Highly emotive artworks favoring
craftsmanship and executed in individualized and heroic languages gave way
during the 1960s to a new style of dematerialization and ultimately a
decentralization of the position once held by the artist in relation to his or
her work. We are beginning to see this conflict repeated near verbatim in
curatorial practice, and the repetition is by all means compelling. While we
observe curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Hans-Ulrich Obrist employing
mechanisms that turn attention, arguably, to their own creative prowess rather
than the work exhibited, a counterforce develops.
This
is where up-and-coming Chicago gallery Alcatraz’s new group show Compiled
People 1 enters the equation. Employing tactics
repurposed from Conceptual art, Alcatraz’s directors Andrea Chiu and Alec
Hatcher transform the task of curatorial selection into a process-oriented game
of chance. The product is dramatic and quite refreshing in that it disrupts any
presence of a self-aggrandizing telos. The viewer explores the exhibition space
in a dérive, free to wander and
plumb the depths of information within each individual work without being urged
to rationalize the piece’s meaning through an overbearing curatorial scheme.
On this note, Daniel Baeza’s Untitled
Series is of interest. This multimedia
drawing installation echoes the interior furnishings of Alcatraz in what can
only be seen as institutional separation anxiety. As the gallery releases the
artist from the ideological constraints of curatorial authority, the work
mimics and blends in with the utilitarian aesthetics of the white cube as a
last ditch effort to (quite literally) adhere to some form of institutional
sovereignty. Baeza’s work playfully resurrects the dialogue between artwork and
curatorial intentionality that the show’s premise seeks to negate.
As
the numerical signifier suggests, Compiled People 1 is only the first installment in an ongoing series.
We might even say it is the proto-iteration of a curating algorithm. My one
remaining question is simply this: what are the details of this algorithmic
operation? The short statement accompanying Compiled People 1 mentions a system similar to the surrealist’s
exquisite corpse as well as the “radical opposition” this can affect, yet any
subtleties therein remain vague. By loosening the secrecy around their methods—making
these curatorial codes open source essentially—Chiu and Hatcher might adopt the
Conceptual credo of production transparency and make their performance in this
grand reenactment more convincing. Nevertheless, in responding to certain
trends in contemporary curation by restaging the old conflict of the passionate
versus the mechanical, Alcatraz’s directorial duo has started a fascinating
series that is certainly worth paying attention to in the coming months.
Photographs courtesy of Alcatraz Chicago.
Photographs courtesy of Alcatraz Chicago.
Conceptual Curation, Concept Oriented Curation, Concept of Curation, All this seems antithetical to the Compiled People "series". They are not concept oriented, they start from a minimal rule, not a conceptual one.
ReplyDeleteConceptual rules seem to stem from a basic need to pick the essence, create niceties (in the accurate or acute sense of the word) and plumb the depths of a subject. Minimal rule seems more fitting here, starting at certain algorithm to that is grounded, you are safe then when you know it will work if you change variables, the algorithm still holds. In this way the Compiled People 1, 2, 3... n, n+1 still works because you can always look at something in its own domain.
Things on a wall need to be looked at.
The curatorial intention of this show came slowly as I parted my way though the fashion show of art-personalities to the indexical flyer stacked two-tall on a chair or a table or a shelf of some sort. The basement was hot and confounding. A man in his early fifties stood poised, furrowing his brow through thick frames toward a piece of paper on the wall. "How much is this one?" he said to someone who looked like they knew something. The flyer seemed to perfectly describe the scene: Deliberately ambiguous. A person remarked "Yeah.. some nights Alec designates parties, some nights he just shows."
ReplyDelete"Well which night is tonight?" I asked. They looked around for a moment.
"Umm, tonight is a show." I wandered on about my "dérive."
I quote,
"As the gallery releases the artist from the ideological constraints of curatorial authority, the work mimics and blends in with the utilitarian aesthetics of the white cube as a last ditch effort to (quite literally) adhere to some form of institutional sovereignty."
This "last ditch effort" is where I hit a wall. I found it absolutely impossible to to consider the "work" unless in direct correspondance to the presence of such "self-aggrandizing" curation, who's presence is somehow denied. The work is faceless, without visible content, intention, or effort. The work could not be less engaging or more ambiguous. With this in mind, the spectacle surrounding these self-aggrandizing curatorial methods pop.
"...free to wander and plumb the depths of information within each individual work without being urged to rationalize the piece’s meaning through an overbearing curatorial scheme."
So, since there is a lack of depth, visible intentionality, and concept throughout the breadth of randomly selected work included in this show I have no choice but to attempt to rationalize the work's meaning through an understanding of curatorial intentionality which in this particular case is admittedly removed, ambiguous, and contentless.
I walked back up the stairs toward the exit in confusion. The fashion show had moved outside onto the sidewalk. I received a number of hard looks up and down from people with territory sitting cold and defensive in conversations in which they were cool and detached from, shifting glances toward competing personas in cluster. "Seeing all these people out here gives me the goosebumps" someone said to someone else. "It totally reminds me of The Factory."