It appears that the two principal forces keeping sculpture alive today are: firstly, the art market which always needs new objects to sell; and, secondly, the art education system which is largely unable to provide students with skills in the newer media that are more able to critically communicate in the culture in which we live. It was the sculptor Carl Andre who said why produce new objects when there are already too many, but if you can turn them into gold, and it doesn’t really matter what they look like, then why complain? (more…)
Isa Genzken’s installation for the German pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007, was a tour de force in the genre of grunge chic. One had an intimation of this even at the doorway of the pavilion courtesy of a massive pile of German Vogue magazine offprints of an article on Genzken’s show. (more…)
Rudolf Stingel’s, Untitled, 2003 was a massive pseudo-minimalist attempt at an interactive installation installed at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. The installation consisted of covering the walls of a small ante-room and a vast main gallery with aluminium foil-coated insulating material punctuated by pseudo-minimalist wall reliefs created by Stingel out of Styrofoam sheets. But, ostensibly, the principal purpose of this work is not to demonstrate the artist’s genius but rather give the viewer a go. The question can be posed, however, as to what exactly the viewer was given a go at. (more…)
CHECK OUT POSTS ON MUNSTER, DOCUMENTA & VENICE BY SELECTING FROM CATEGORIES TOP RIGHT OF SCREEN
I have seen Franz West’s sculpture before and not been that impressed but somehow in the context of the 52nd Venice Biennale’s Arsenale they began to look pretty good. (more…)
We spent just two days at Documenta 12 before getting out of town to visit more interesting exhibitions. During our time in Kassel we trawled through Museum Fridericianum, Aue-Pavillon, Documenta Halle, Neue Galerie, and Schloß Wilhelmshöhe, which is pretty well everything. This year’s Documenta was quite as big as the 2002 Documenta, but the 2002 exhibition was beautifully curated and I remember I spent five days savouring the work. This year the experience was highly disappointing almost to the point of insult. If you really have to go and see for yourself, then try to get through the Fridericianum and the Aue-Pavillon in one day, by then you should be ready to leave town as soon as possible. We headed off to Karlsruhe to ZKM and I would recommend that, because it was richer even than Muenster (which is definitely good) which we went to later.
(more…)
Paul McCarthy, Hot Dog, 1974. Self-immolatory performance art was not uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s.
John Bock and Jason Rhoades were born in the same year, 1965, and their work reflects the exuberant hopelessness of art at the turn of the millennium. There is no real attempt to be emancipatory because to think in terms of emancipation in the context of the globalisation of capitalism seems absurd. It is interesting therefore to examine the work of Rhoades’ mentor Paul McCarthy, who is twenty years his senior and possessed of a world view that belongs more to the 1960s and 1970s that Claire Bishop refers to in her history of installation art (2005). But due to one of the anomalies of the fine art system McCarthy came into stardom with the newer generation and his work tunes in very well with that of Bock and Rhoades due to its obsession with a theatre of the absurd. But there is evidence that this artist has not totally relinquished a social-critical stance. (more…)
Jason Rhoades, Detail, The Black Pussy … and the Pagan Idol Workshop, 2005. Hauser and Wirth, London.
If Bock transposes the manic self-expression of Expressionism into a simulacral, hyperreality then Jason Rhoades (1965-2006) does something similar with the American Dream. But whereas Bock takes something putatively ‘authentic’ and transforms it into simulacral theatrics, Rhoades hyperrealises the already hyperreal. Rhoades’ immersive installations are a theatre of dementia and dissolution; and like Bock, Rhoades’ mises en scène take over an entire gallery space thereby becoming thoroughly immersive. The Black Pussy … and the Pagan Idol Workshop is such an installation constructed in London at Hauser and Wirth in 2005. At the sensory, immersive level The Black Pussy … and the Pagan Idol Workshop treats us to an experience not unlike the regression to childhood evident in Bock’s Klutterkammer. In Black Pussy we find an adult psyche metaphorically hurled through the Lacanian mirror into the polymorphous perversity of the American Dream. (more…)
It appears that the two principal forces keeping sculpture alive today are: firstly, the art market which always needs new objects to sell; and, secondly, the art education system which is largely unable to provide students with skills in the newer media that are more able to critically communicate in the culture in which we live. It was the sculptor Carl Andre who said why produce new objects when there are already too many, but if you can turn them into gold, and it doesn’t really matter what they look like, then why complain? (more…)
