Gregor

Broken homes

In the article 'Broken Homes' Andrew Mackenzie looks at the work 'Valhalla' by artist Cullum Morton, which was exhibited at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Mackenzie discusses Valhalla in relation to its visual appearance of ruins and something lost. Describing the work, along with Babylonia and Tomorrows Land as fertile with meaning and 'increasingly non-linear’, suggesting an evolving maturity in Morton’s practice. He also remarks that Morton’s works have grown spatially, discussing what that has done to the way in which the audience is able to digest the work and the new possibilities of working directly with the concepts of interior/exterior, public/private and the 'framing of experience'.

Mackenzie talks of Morton’s Valhalla as an exploration of ‘the battlefield’, he points out however that it is not one of the ‘obvious kind’. Making apparent his caution of falling into the contemporary predisposition to ‘mythologize today’s destruction’ and remarks that any association of this kind is liable to only take away from the work something that is otherwise very poignant. He also suggests that any implication of a historical model associated with ‘terror’ and the ‘climate of fear’ fractures the calamitous continuity of history. Where as he states that Morton’s ancient title ‘Valhalla’ (Hall of the Slain) does not ask for this disruption, instead it subtly asks for a state of conscious recognition.

By steering away from the limitations of an association to terror and destruction he is able to explore the more deeply subtle aspects of the work.

Mackenzie suggest the consideration of Valhalla as ‘the story of a broken home… where the everyday drama of thwarted domesticity plays out’ and its relation, as a subject, to the domains of public/private life.

The house itself (as it’s original) is tied to a particular time in Morton’s childhood, which has since been torn down. So from this came the beginning of a work about the politics of the home and the public/private. Morton engages the audience through the uses of sound design, filmic references, advertising and the like in order to bring together a familiarity of post-modern conditions. The sheer size of Valhalla is also a reference of its own fiction and helps resist the romantic notion of biography. Mackenzie mentions that for Morton public and private life are inextricable from ‘the question of habitation’. You can see this questioning of the gap or erosion of public and private space in Morton’s exaggerated contrast between the ‘cool spotless white’ interior and the decaying walls of the exterior. Mackenzie also bring up Mary Jane Jacob’s ‘The death and life of Great American Cities’ 1961 to further shed light on these notions of the public and the private and the ‘impoverishment of public space’.

Mackenzie pronounces Morton’s Valhalla as an exemplification of both the tendencies of history's continuing relation to decay/destruction, while also referencing contemporary conditions of ownership, development and the internalization and wearing of public/private life.

art and audience

Wurm, Erwin. Confessional, 2003. Installation view. Museum of Contemporary Art.

Wurm, Erwin. Idiot, 2003. Installation view. Museum of Contemporary Art.

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm creates fictional spaces and sculptural objects, by manipulating and directing the audience/person to become a part of the artwork.

In the work Confessional Wurm places a small wooden house with two large holes cut from its opposite walls in the middle of the gallery and invites spectators put their head inside the house. The spectator is then meant to expose something about himself or herself to the other person. Where as, works like Idiot 2003 use inscriptions and text to direct the audience through the creation and form of the work. In Idiot Wurm places an ordinary chair in the middle of the gallery floor and by a tiny directional drawing in the top left hand corner of the wooden backrest asks the viewer to help create his final piece.

Wurm, through simple instruction, creates new and intimate environments that are completely dependent on the audience’s inhabitation for their essence. These works rely strongly on the audience's response and reactions to the proposed 'model/plan' for them to become ‘total’, whereby the author becomes transparent as the audience begins to create the invented situations.

1.Wurm, Erwin. Confessional, 2003. Installation view. Reproduced from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=1479

2. Wurm, Erwin. Idiot, 2003. Installation view. Reproduced from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=1479

institutions and the kosuthian way of viewing

Joseph Kosuth, One in Three Chairs, 1965.

Joseph Kosuth, Titled (Art as Idea as Idea), 1966.

Joseph Kosuth, Leaning Glass, 1965.

Joseph Kosuth,'Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) [Water]', 1966.

J Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965


Who decides what should be displayed? Who gets to speak in the name of ‘Art’, ‘the public’ or ‘the nation’?

What are the processes, interests and negotiations involved in the construction of an exhibition or museum display?

And most importantly what, as a result, is silenced or left out?

Artists use the museum as a medium in order to investigate cultural production and knowledge, provoking the idea that museums always involve cultural, social and political negotiations and value-judgements when constructing an exhibition.

These negotiations and value-judgements must by nature have political, social and cultural implications.

In the case of Joseph Kosuth there is a strong drive to explore and question the production of meaning in the nature or realm of art.

It is hard to surmise each individual piece in Kosuth’s exhibitions due to the size and complexity of the displays so instead I’d rather point out some of their underlying issues and themes.

A lot of Kosuth’s exhibitions look at the role of the curator and museum as a business that pronounces the importance of certain practices and art objects as belonging to the ‘proper’ realm of Art. He questions the way in which museum exhibitions choose and display art works and the effect this has on the audience.

Kosuth’s practice is also influence by the writings of 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein’s theories on language arise from the principles of symbolism and the essential relationships between ‘words’ and ‘things’ in any language.[1] In the text Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein is concerned with, among other things, Accurate Symbolism. Accurate Symbolism is a concept of symbolism in which a sentence of things means something rather definite.

This notion of accurate symbolism can be seen expressed in Kosuth’s work, primarily those like One in Three Chairs 1965, in which an ordinary wooden chair, a photograph of the ordinary wooden chair and a dictionary definition of the word ‘chair’ are displayed side-by-side in a gallery space. Not only does this work question what is by definition ‘real’/ authentic or inauthentic, but its process of display also undermines the business of the curator and museum/institution. The curator of the exhibition displaying One in Three Chairs must follow the instructions stipulated by Kosuth, whereby the curator is to a degree made powerless. Instead of sending his completed work to be installed, as seen fit by the curator or director of the museum, Kosuth sends off a brief and succinct description of how the work must be completed and displayed.

One in Three Chairs has been displayed numerous times with the only things that remain constant being the Instructions for construction and display and the Photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of ‘Chair’.

In a work that appears so formal and restricted by rules and guidelines, its inconstant nature would seem surprising. Yet it is exactly the syntax of the language of these instructions that Kosuth is playing with. For Kosuth an artwork must always involve a test and in this case he is testing the construction of art through language[2]. Although each curator is given the exact same copy of instructions and enlargement of the dictionary definition, each curator is still inherently unique in time and place.

Which bring us back to Kosuth relationship to the ideas on logic of Wittgenstien. Wittgenstein proposes two problems with the logic of symbolism; the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in the combinations of symbols and the conditions for uniqueness of meaning or reference in symbols or combinations of symbols[3].

This is not to say that the curator is given back his curatorial power, it is merely that each time the work is set up the language of the instructions and the completed work is understood in a different way. The work suggests the problematic relationship between language, image and referent and causes the viewer to question representation, definition, reality and above all form.

Kosuth reiterates these points in the works such as Leaning Glass, in which five foot sheets of glass with one word printed in black lettering on the surfaces are leant casually against the wall and designed to be direct description of themselves.

Other works like Art as idea as idea also explores, through direct visual language, the status of art and the definition of an art object.

Kosuth creates a non-confrontational dialogue between the audience, the art object and 'Art' to suggest that one must also look analytically and realistically when gazing upon a museum/institution display and to think about the what the concealed message being projected may be.

Kosuth’s exhibitions to some extent denounce the trust we put in the role of the institution and assert that the concreteness of art-historical museum displays leave gaps in the total entity of art[4]. Whereby kosuths works can be seem as a pleading or coaxing of the audience to make assessments of truth based of self-understanding and practical consideration.

Images;

1. Joseph Kosuth, One in Three Chairs, 1965. Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and photographic enlargement of a dictionary definition of "chair", Chair 32 3/8 x 14 7/8 x 20 7/8" (82 x 37.8 x 53 cm), photographic panel 36 x 24 1/8" (91.5 x 61.1 cm), text panel 24 x 24 1/8" (61 x 61.3 cm). Image reproduced from MOMA. http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A3228&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1

2. Joseph Kosuth, Titled (Art as Idea as Idea), 1966. printed definitions glued to board form of presentation: six mounted photostats. photostats: 48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm) each overall: 48 x 303 inches (121.9 x 769.6 cm) image reproduced from Sean Kelly Gallery. http://www.skny.com/exhibitions/2008-10-25_neither-appearance-nor-illusion

3. Joseph Kosuth, Leaning Glass, 1965. Glass sheets with printed words, 60x60 inches. Image reproduced from Sean Kelly Gallery http://www.skny.com/exhibitions/2008-10-25_neither-appearance-nor-illusion

4. 'Titled (Art as Idea as Idea) [Water]', 1966. Photostat, mounted on board, 48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm). Image reproduced from Guggenheim, New York. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search='Titled%20(Art%20as%20Idea%20as%20Idea)%20%5BWater%5D'&page=&f=Title&object=73.2066

5. Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965
 Installation: chair out of wooden and 2 photographs 
 200 X 271 X 44 cm. Image reproduced from Centre Pompidou. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-ArtConcept/image03.htm

---

[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ (New York: Routledge, 2001)

[2] Stuart Morgan, ‘Art as Idea as Idea – An interview with Joseph Kosuth’, Freize no.16 (May 1994): 2.

[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ (New York: Routledge, 2001)

[4] Stuart Morgan, ‘Art as Idea as Idea – An interview with Joseph Kosuth’, Freize no.16 (May 1994): 4.

Sorry i could do it by the time i said, i tried to do it as fast as possible. Also the spacing of this blog is not under my control.

PARAsite - architecture of the street.

Micheal Rakowitz's PARAsites were created to serve as a temporary shelter for the homeless in New York city.

"PARASITISM IS DESCRIBED AS A RELATIONSHIP IN WHICH A PARASITE TEMPORARILY OR PERMANENTLY EXPLOITS THE ENERGY OF A HOST"[1]

Each paraSITE is made of simple materials such as plastic bags, polyethylene tubing, hooks and tape designed to be attached to the exterior outtake vent of a building's HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system) which then inflates and heats the custom built site. Being lightweight they are transportable and easy to dismantle, whereby all one needs to shelter him or her self for the night is to attach it to existing architecture's HVAC.

These paraSITEs not only serve those in need but are also a reaction to Boston, Cambridge, Massachusett and New York City's attempts to make their city 'homeless-proof' by re-designing benches and grates into impossible resting places and deploying outdoor sprinklers to serve as a deterrent to homeless people.

The first prototype was presented to a Bill Stone in 1997 who unsurprisingly expressed his enthusiasm[2]. In 1998 Rakowitz had finished the basic design and produced and distributed them to 30 homeless people in Boston, Cambridge, Massachusett and New York.

The project is ongoing..

Personally i think this project is not only a humanitarian act, but a magical and innovative approach to a terrible and seeminly unacknowledged issue. As i said earlier these paraSITEs not only help the people that need it most but they also exemplify the obvious cruelty of a world or society more willing to look way (or not look at all) than to help.

Rakowitz is constructing temporary homes for the homeless. He recognizes this issue will not be going away over night, so he considers their position and creates objects that can at least help them for now.

[1]http://michaelrakowitz.com/parasite/

[2]Ibid

Pictures reproducing from 'Micheal Rakowitz - paraSITE' http://michaelrakowitz.com/parasite/

globali smART

I find myself at a bit of a loss on what to write about art and globalism. It seems today, with the advent of the internet and developments in communications etc, that most things are global, or at least globally available.

I guess what Eleanor Heartney is discussing in Art and Globalism is the use of global issues, concerns, practices, trends etc in art (ha, what a discovery i have made.. ), so in that light i think its best to reference the exhibition we went to see at MCA a few weeks ago.

Louis Bufardeci and Zen Ito both deal with the 'geographical' world in a manner which deconstructs and reconfigures it. Both works look at groups or groupings and organizations, but seem to reshape them into a unified collection of autonomous parts.

Louis Bufardeci in particular looks at global organizations and countries as a whole and reformats them into homogenous images, installations and textiles that refer to global society's and country's inter-relations/connections and the placement of self or nationality among them. The large wall painting makes the effort to standardize each country into what looks to be a basic architectural blue-print of attempted equality, while the images or the opposite wall look to have reorganised the world into a ceaselessly inter-connected sphere.

Zen Ito on the other hand seems to communicate the notion of self or the individual and question what it is that unifies one to another. The mounted textiles of contour-like drawings and collection of 'parts' displayed on a table in the centre of the room seem to represent individual aspects - whether it be of the world or the individual. While the video works, especially the video shown through two-way mirror glass, seems to ask the question of 'where exactly is my placement in this (constructed) world?' Another curious factor in this installation is the aqua coloured walls, this painting of the walls in a loud and almost obtrusive colour leaves the walls as not only a place for mounting works but transforms them into the 'flesh' that holds the fragmented skeleton together - it provides the desire unity.

All in all both works present different aspects of globally familiar concerns/issues and set out to reconfigure, reorganise and assimilate them into some sense of unity.

This is only what i though, im probably wrong. Also feel free to mock my lame title pun..

And sorry this is so late.

Spirituality

A break occurred during the birth of Modernism, in the late 19th century, from religious imagery, as artists sought to convey less the strict subject of faith and more the rhetoric of the transcendent. Artists began to recognize art as religious or spiritual in itself and promoted 'individual revelation, universal brotherhood and spiritual ecstasy'[1].

This break from canonic religious subject matter gave artists the freedom to choose their own subject or, alternatively, non-subject. Post WWII the split that had occurred between religious form and subject matter had open the windows for artists to produced religious or spiritual works irrespective of their faith. This was the beginning of a huge leap that gave the possibility of a universal understanding or tolerance of what is essential or sacred to all 'beings' - spirituality and faith.

Houshiary and Pip Horn's Breathe II, 2004-2005

In my opinion a beautiful example of this amalgamation of artistic revelation and religious or spiritual essence is Shirazeh Houshiary and Pip Horn's Breathe II, a site specific work installed in Battery Park New York from May 2004 to April 2005. The works essence is drawn from the artists Sufi beliefs - the inner, mystical dimensions of Islamic belief, yet its aesthetic qualities seems to adhere to the principles of minimalism - a product or language of western art. Breathe II can also be seen to reference both Constant Brancusi Endless Column 1937 -1938 and the high prismatic tomb towers and minarets of Islamic Architecture[1].

Constant Brancusi, Endless Column, 1937 -1938

The minaret of Mas’ud III at Ghazni, Afghanistan, c1100

This binding of Eastern belief and Western practice gives to the work the possibility of transcending dogmatic classification, it becomes a geometric study into essence and being.

Houshiary and Horm have not only simplified the structure into a sinuous and flowing sculptural form, but have also stripped bared and recreated something that is essential to all of us in a way that is spiritually enthralling yet untainted by religious stigma or classification - the breathe, a most universal aspect of living.

"I set to capture my breathe, to find essence of my own existence, transcending name, nationality, cultures" [2]

- Houshiary draws formal vocabularies from diverse and specific origins, then lets them flow into common forms. [3]

[1] Eleanor Heartney, Art and Today - Art and Spirituality. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008)

[2] Shirazeh Houshiary, Text - Fereshteh Daftari, http://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/

[3] Shirazeh Houshiary, Text - Fereshteh Daftari, http://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/

[4] Shirazeh Houshiary, Text - Fereshteh Daftari, http://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/

Images;

• Houshiary and Pip Horn's Breathe II, 2004-2005, NY - http://i1.exhibit-e.com/lehmannmaupin/e6501a9b.jpg
• Constant Brancusi, Endless Column, 1937 -1938 - http://www.lausterradu.com/index.php?cat=1&sec=6&prj=22
• The minaret of Mas’ud III at Ghazni, Afghanistan, c1100 - http://www.historywiz.com/galleries/minaretofmasudIII.htm

Tamy Ben-Tors identities

Tamy Ben-Tor, Normal, 2006

Tamy Ben-Tor, The End of Art, 2006

Tamy ben-tor uses social identities to construct video performance works that look at the prejudices prevalent in contemporary society. Her videos are a collage of different satirized stereotypes acted out in an outrageous and conspicuous manner. Ben-tor's work on identity and stereotypes is interested in peoples psychological state, the psychological state they hold when they are apparently just being themselves. However each character is exaggerated, overtly absurd, an imitation of media and televisions simplified version of the social individual. Each character is completely self-absorbed, caught in their own ideological systems, they cling to truth (however fake that truth may be) in order to construct and experience their own identity. 

The works poses the question of how much the natural world conditions us and how much of our ideas, thoughts and ideologies today - with our continuous confrontation with media, advertising and television, are shaped by the what we see and hear on our 2 dimension screen.

The question of identity has become a big concern in contemporary society and the answers are hard to determine. What makes the individual an individual, what does it mean to be individual and who determines good and bad.. and does or should this distinction exist?

Identity is 'the fact of being who or what ones is' and how much of this is now being shaped and how much of us - ourself, unique and self-conscious, shapes who we are - our identity?

Each of Tamy Ben-Tors characters are uniquely human, even if this is unfortunately so.

The works are comparable to Cindy Shermans role playing or staged film and photography in the sense that they both play with the appearance of an individuals identity.

She also had a work at the 2008 Sydney Biennial, you can view the work on the website and also alot of her work is on youtube.com. 

Images from Art Review 

http://www.artreview.com/forum/topic/show?id=1474022%3ATopic%3A151630 

collaboration Moffatt and Hillberg

Tracey Moffatt
Born 1960 in Brisbane, Australia. 
Lives and works in Sydney and Brisbane, Australia and New York City, USA



Gary Hillberg
Born 1982 in Perth, Australia. 
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia

 

For the 2008 Sydney Biennale Tracey Moffat collaborated with fellow Australian artist Gary Hillberg to produce ‘Revolution’ (2008), the end result was a visual study into the stereotypes attached to revolution, and its aftermath, in cinema. The film is a ‘mash-up’ of popular dramatic scenes juxtaposed with excerpts from b-grade movies and held together through powerful visual dynamism and a melodramatic soundtrack.

 

This isn’t the first time these two have paired up to create dynamic new footage, in 2003 they made their own 21 minute love story (LOVE 2003) taken from pre-existing classics films to the more dazzling scenes of the 1960’s and 70’s and amalgamated them into an energetic montage of the ‘sugary’ moments of cinema.

 

(Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg have made numerous other movies in the past decade including; Lip - 1999, 10 min. Color and Artist - 1999, 10 min. Color.

 

A film collaboration between Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg 2003, 21 min., Color/BW

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/deepend/features/gallery/gallery2005/img/artworks/moffatt1_big.jpg

(sorry I couldn’t find a picture of REVOLUTION)

 

I think what is so useful or complementary about working in collaboration with another person is that the project is immediately taken from the insula arena of the mind and displayed, reconfigured and discussed in the open air of  minds – one is forced to look both objectively and subjectively at their own workings and ideas. 

Outside ideas generate new perspectives.

Vito Acconci - The Body

‘At the beginning, setting the terms: if I specialize in a medium, I would be fixing a ground for myself, a ground I would have to be digging myself out of, constantly, as one medium was substituted for another – so, then, instead of turning toward “ground” I would shift my attention and turn to “instrument”, I would focus on myself as the instrument that acted on what ever ground was, from time to time, available.’

Body as instrument.

Instrument for “art doing” as opposed to “art experiencing”

“Art experiencing” is an assumption - a mere by-product of the completed form.

Vito Acconci, Step Piece, 1970.

102 Christopher Street; four months (February–April–July–November), 1970; 8AM each day.

Daily training makes for daily improvement.

The activity is left open; it is, in principle, a public performance.

Vito Acconci Steps into Performance (and Out) (1979)

1. Into Action

Excerpts taken from Theories and documents of Contemporary Art, Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz.

article review.. sorry its late!

Nicholas Zurbrugg article Installation Art – Essence and Existence examines the different elements that constitute a work with artistic merit or the innovative qualities ‘that widen the languages of creativity. Zurbrugg suggests Installations art’s position of autonomous ‘real-time’, as something that has the ability to co-exist through orchestrated time (duration), techno-time (data recording) or virtually outside of time as a separate and complete entity. These qualities of constructed ‘real-time’ and each works innate three dimensionality gives the artist the freedom to explore and assess new ways to develop and manipulate spatial impact on the viewer. Much Installation Art comes into existence through the artists desire to be self-governing and redefine the gallery space, whereby very exhibition is subject to the desires of the artist and the dimensions the installation is interfacing with, therefore the work also become self-documenting and self-conscious – its unique existence determines its essence. Zurbrugg emphasises that Installation Art has the potential to work on multiple levels of perception, participation, construction and idea/aesthetic essence, suggesting that we look towards the preceding modern movements of futurism, the Bauhaus experiments, dada, surrealism and constructivism in order to decipher the complex nature of the practice and stating that ‘many forms of contemporary Installation Art make historical sense as the systematic and technological realisation of modernist ‘dreams’’.

Zurbrugg reference to John Cage’s installation/performance-like happenings suggest the similarities between Installation Art and Performance and makes sense of the idea that because the audience is seen to be an active participant the work is always art-in progress and, therefore, is able to ‘consciously evade both pre-classification and post-classification’. Zurbrugg attitude seems to become a little more pessimistic when comparing the principles of Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau 1924-23 and Marcel Duchamp’s Urinal 1917, suggesting that while Schwitters could be seen as the ‘precursor for the commemorative impulse in post-modern Installation Art, or those who take value seriously’ Duchamp’s initial impact have perhaps now given way to insipid and under considered ‘static’ installations. He further impresses that there is something insufficient about second-hand Duchampian shock-value installations through a statement by Joseph Beuys (Art monthly, 112 January 1988) that “the Silence of Duchamp is overrated” and that art should be “something which is related to humankinds creative structure and senses and to thought, feeling and the gaining of power”. This reference to the work of Joseph Beuys emphasises the notion that Installation art should be that of nostalgia, documentation, memorial and the artist and the audience (as one is the same). He moves on to point out that Installation Art with substance is generally in tune with current society and that kinetic works are most congruent. Perhaps again linking installation Art to performance – motion, or remarking that technology and progressive action is at the for-front of social values and must therefore be recognised as an artistic possibility. Zurbrugg poses a guideline to deciphering and recognising valid or cogent forms of installations and less valid substitutes, reinforcing that what advocates essence is Installation that actively invites the audience’s participation and contemplation.