We spent Saturday going around the galleries in Chelsea, it is a very different experience to London; with streets upon streets of galleries one is able to walk down the street peeking into shows and making split second decisions whether to go in, safe with the knowledge that there will always be another street with more art. This act of window shopping for art forces the first point of contact with the work to be aesthetically based; if it looks good then you go in, if it doesn’t then you move on to the gallery next door. Its abundantly clear that this structure isn’t set up for people shopping for ideas, and by default the art within the system isn’t either. This instantly puts the art on the pedestal of unaffordability for 99.99% of people, and, as a result it is placed within the realm of unreachability; for the general public the pedestal is as tall as it is decorative; very!
That being said we don’t necessarily disagree with this system (there is still some brilliant work), we’re merely noting how it’s bizarre; the structure of the gallery network is probably how it is because it is necessary for its survival. If this is the case then it is a shame that the petrol that fuels the art world is extracted around the notion that the artwork is treated in a god-like manner. In doing this there’s not really any risk from the galleries; perhaps if the art was viewed as a peer rather than a god then the system would be able to sustain itself through creating a more relatable connection to the general public, thus increasing the audience size and public attention. For example, lets say a company sells really fancy coffee cups for £35.00; they sell 1,000 a month generating £35,000. If their coffee cups were priced at £3.50 then they would have to sell 10,000 in a month to make the same money but people would be more likely to buy it due to the its low price. The company loses some of its aura as a brand, but it’s low price increases the chances of its exposure and potentially could lead to more sales. This is obviously a risk, if it doesn’t pay off then the company will lose money; perhaps the galleries need to take this sort of risk, who knows? It might be beneficial! Not necessarily a monetary reduction but a reduction in the mystery of the ‘genius’ artist making ‘genius’ artwork for their ‘genius’ friends that doesn’t require a logical explanation because the art simply runs through the artist’s ‘genius’ veins. Perhaps it’s naïve of us to believe that making work more accessible will make more people pay attention to art, but surely it’s worth giving it a shot!
Aside from some mild frustration we still saw some great work. Pace gallery had a show by Tim Hawkinson called ‘Counterclockwise’. Hawkinson works using commonly found objects, they are then reinterpreted into difference forms or used from difference purposes. The recognizable nature of these objects causes the viewer to relate to them in relation to body or function, so regardless of how far Hawkinson forces these objects to travel in terms of purpose one cannot separate the work from the original function of its constituent objects. Hawkinson is obviously aware of this and uses it to his advantage, producing an interesting critique of the use of materials in art; the individual material objects used to make a piece of work should inform the idea as much as the appearance of the objects collectively. One of the most interesting pieces in the show was the mechanized work ‘Signature’ where, sitting on a small desk, a small handmade machine signs the artist’s name on receipt papers repeatedly. After every signature the paper is automatically cut and falls into a pile on the floor where the viewer is invited to pick one from the large pile and keep. The act of signing one’s name on an artwork is not for the benefit of the artist; it is one for the buyer – a stamp of originality and a confirmation of uniqueness. By delegating this task to a robot and making it happen repeatedly Hawkinson degrades the value of his own signature through the production of hundreds of copies (limited only by the ink in the pen) but also by removing himself from the entire act. The school desk leads one to think of classic forms of school punishment, and naturally ways to avoid getting caught; Hawkinson has been punished and he crafted a robot using things in the room to write his lines for him. Like an ape with a rock the use of the environment is a primitive form of technology but also represents a very intelligent level of creativity that is present within people – especially children.
Gaggosian Gallery had a brilliant exhibition from Taryn Simon with her work ‘Paperwork and the Will of Capital” where she recreated the bouquets of flowers that were present when powerful men signed agreements that influenced the fate of the world. Simon examines accords treaties and decrees drafted to influence systems of governance and economics, from nuclear armament to oil deals and diamond trading. All of the works involve the countries present at the 1944 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, which addressed the globalization of economics after World War II, leading to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Using photos of the signing of these documents Simon worked with a botanist to create an “impossible bouquet”—a concept that emerged in Dutch still-life painting parallel to the country’s seventeenth-century economic boom, which ushered in the development of modern capitalism. The existence of the “impossible bouquet” is dependent on the existence of the global consumer market, the very market that the singing of these important documents shaped.
Flowers also have strong connections to stereotypes of femininity and peace, this stereotype, created by men, is exploited by Simon to highlight the absurdly small number of women that were present or influential in these decisions. These works are presented as large photographs with colourful, painted backgrounds; In each work the image of the bouquet is informed by a description of the event where the bouquet was present, thus highlighting absence of any actual photographs of the event. Simon’s choice not to include these images replaces the recognisable faces of these events with recognisable species of flowers of various colours in various arrangements questioning the validity of the arrangements of such singings. The events are as equally artificially arranged as the flowers are in a bouquet; the powerful men in the original images are curated and arranged by even more powerful men who act behind the scenes, much like a florist or even an artist.
Mark Dion had two large works at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery; ‘The Library for the Birds of New York’ is a large birdcage containing 22 live birds and assorted books, magazines, images, ephemera and objects related to birds. At the centre of the work is an 11ft oak tree; trees are representative of many things; food chains, knowledge, and evolution all important philosophical and scientific constructs. The viewer is invited to walk around the cage; the act of entering the exhibit is the same as entering the enclosure at a zoo; it feels like unique and possibly dangerous situation. Entering the cage makes you the spectacle for people exterior of the space, this offers the people outside of the cage to step back and view the full picture; instead of watching someone else you are really watching a reflection of yourself within a societal construct. This is helped by the fact that a cage is automatically associated with microcosms and feelings of being trapped; it is easy to project the world exterior to the gallery into the gallery space and then the art world into the cage. Exterior world > Gallery. Gallery>Cage. Art>????
The birds, uninterested in the objects in the cage, posses knowledge outside of human experience, rendering them fundamentally unknowable by man. Displaying a detachment from the actual object and literature of the actual object, much like this blog post is completely detached from the actual art, or at least someone’s experience of the art; we are attaching opinion to the objects and events, the discourse between us (writing this) and the viewer (reading this) is confessional rather than factual. Raising the question whether anything(or any documentation) can truly be factual; if everything is confessional to an extent then surely a lie contains as much ‘truth’ as a truth. This has led us to think about the value of confessing; it carries connotations of knowledge of wrongdoing and therefore guilt, if everything we say is opinion based and therefore confessional are we inherently guilty? - a terrible curse. We are loosely planning a performative confessional piece ‘A Poor Trait of the Artist as a Young Man’, a play on words with the James Joyce novel; fictional works carry as many ‘truths’ as a truth because they’re creation is purely confessional; the only way to experience it is via the opinion of the author. A confessional event can also be linked to religion; people repent for their sins through confession to inanimate objects or people in roles that are sworn to secrecy – people acting as inanimate objects. Although we are unsure of the structure of the work we want to address the fact/fiction boundary that are by-products of guilt, and address the confessional in relation to the largest platform of opinion publishing that has ever existed; the Internet.
The Michael Riedel exhibition at David Zwirner investigated a subject that was close to our recent interests; art supplies. Riedel wallpapered the gallery walls with text extracted from a website selling art supplies, the text is fragmented and unreadable meaning that the content does not inform its origins. In doing this Riedel subverts the intended use of the products that are for sale on the website and uses the information as an art material. The text on the wall has the same effect as white noise, it is the bi-product of something going wrong or a transmission ending, fall out of the media age. Hanging on the white-noise-walls are images taken from textbooks of animal skeletons, their bodies have been substituted with plastic bags from Blick art shop, representing a physical fallout of the man made, the plastic bags, like the skeletons will remain as reminders of presence for years to come.
Bruce Silverstein gallery had a selection of photographs by Rosalind Fox Solomon. The title ‘Got to Go’ is reminiscent of internet slang for good-bye “gtg”, is commonly used to sign off instant message conversations, not only does it nod towards the rapidity of online communication but also suggests a certain physical rush, hurry or panic. The photos reflect this well; presented with Instagram and Polaroid style borders they show quick fleeting moments of life, one gets the impression that the people in the separate images know each other. Like the portraits in Harry Potter they are able to slide out of their frame and into the frame of another, producing a community of images. When you make a community you inevitable make social connections and intricate webs of relationships. As you walk through the space you experience these fleeting and light-hearted connections, there is a sense of happy nostalgia as if you are existing in someone’s photo album. This illusion is broken down when you enter the final room; a three-channel projection slowly cycles through the images from the show you’ve just walked through wile an eyrie synth plays a constant note that changes in pitch when a photo changes. The setting makes the pictures seem much more sinister, and you find yourself detesting them, piecing together twisted fictions of the community that you so fondly remembered from the room before. It’s like the final scene of The Usual Suspects where US customs special agent Dave Kujan pieces together the evidence, the camera, acting as Kujan’s eye flicks between the evidence in quick bursts unravelling the story that has happened before and creating a completely new one. By that point Kujan really has ‘Got to Go’ to chase after the infamous Keyser Söze. ‘Got to Go’ has a really great plot twist. (SORRY FOR THE SPOILERS)
anyway. gtg x