#Alexander Alberro

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Dan Graham, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, 1997 [Saint-Martin Bookshop, Bruxelles-Brussel. © Dan Graham]

Concept and Direction: Gloria Moure

Texts: Alexander Alberro , Christine Van Assche, Eric de Bruyn, and Mark Francis among others

Exhibition: June 26 – November 2, 1997

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Marcel Duchamp resume

Originally posted 2/19/2007

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12/26/22

I kind of feel like I’ve gotten nothing done today. I did morning pages though. It could be fun to look at books on Amazon tonight. I’ve slept so much today I just want to feel ok. I watched the Wake Up in the Headspace app which made me feel a little better. It’s midnight but I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep very soon. I could read but I want to get at something through journaling. I think I would feel a lot better if I fixed my sleep pattern. You know, just go to bed and wake up at a normal time. Go to the gym, apply for jobs, keep a clean apartment, and write. And meditate. I will try to be productive by reading or cleaning if I can’t fall asleep soon. I will still try to get up early tomorrow morning. There is a lot to do. I’ll take melatonin and see if that helps. I do want to have a better sleep schedule. I’m glad I did morning pages but I need to work on actual poems. Have I mentioned I’m a poet? I think sleep is the reason I’ve been so frustrated tonight. I should work on mental health coping skills too. Sorry I’m all over the place, but I was in a real funk and frustrated as you can probably tell. What else do I want to write about? I’ve already journaled in Morning pages.

Is there any benefit about talking about my poetry on Tumblr? Im reading these days about Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art. The book on conceptual art is Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology edited by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson. It’s an anthology of writings from the 60s and 70s. Pretty dense writing, quite a mental exercise to read. I think it is an important collection of writing from that period though. I like reading and learning new words from the book. I’m honestly not retaining much of what I read. I read right before going to bed so I don’t synthesize what I’m reading. My approach has been to push through it to see if I find anything that strikes me.

I have a few artists I want to learn more about. One for example is Sarah Sze. This is why I mentioned looking at books on Amazon earlier.

[fundgruber]

Daniel Buren, Peinture-Sculpture (Painting-Sculpture). 1971

“Buren was obviously acutely aware of the fact that the architectural forces in the interior of Wright's building are so powerful that they tend to reduce what is in the gallery space to mere decorative embellishments." Alexander Alberro: Turn of the Screw. October 80, 1997

“This was the piece that was protested and removed after one day because it obstructed the view to surrounding works.“ https://blogs.uoregon.edu/danielburen/2015/02/16/peinture-sculpture-painting-sculpture-1971/

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Drawing the next logical inference from Yves Klein’s “exhibition of the void” at the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris a decade earlier, Barry now took electrical currents of varying strength emitted by radio transmitters as his material. The work’s negation of the visual was coupled with an increased emphasis on the role of the body of the beholder. “The nature of carrier waves in a room—especially the FM—is affected by people,” Barry stated at the time, in terms that reveal the extent to which he envisioned the viewer’s active participation in his work. “The body itself, as you know, is an electrical device. Like a radio or an electric shaver it affects carrier waves. . . . [Thus] the form of a piece is affected [by the people near it] because of the nature of the material that it is made of.”

Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, Alexander Alberro

[skowhegan]

Luis Camnitzer (F ‘14) ISLAA Exhibition Talks: Luis Camnitzer in conversation with Alexander Alberro Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) 50 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075 April 14, 12pm EDT

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One sentence from the reading

“Araeen thus forges a link between art and politics, and proposes the development of critical investigations capable of challenging some of the basic beliefs about culture. One of the most consequential of these is the humanist notion that the value of art is measured by the degree to which it succeeds in conveying human self-expression.”

from institutions, critique, and institutional critique by alexander alberro

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Julio Le Parc: Kinetic Works, Text(s) by Alexander Alberro,... http://ift.tt/2zO14Ny

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Analyzing in relation to other analysis

Throughout the semester, I have read Whitewalling a book by Aruna d'Souza, The Function of the Studio by Daniel Buren, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics by Claire Bishop, A Short History of Rirkrit Tiravanija by Jerry Saltz, and I have read The Turn of the Screw by Alexander Alberro. I have found one underlying theme throughout all of these books and articles; traditions in the Art world. More specifically, a critique of these long-standing traditions in the "Artworld". These readings have explicitly written about how the art world, as well as the world we live in, nationally and internationally―has continually grappled with the politics of race and social status. The ways this struggle has influenced how museums, curators, and artists tussle with notions of freedom of speech and the scope of censorship.

Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts is a book that analyzes three events that sparked protests against racism at New York art institutions that are each a decade apart. The book includes Dana Schutz's painting of Emmett Till in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, Donald Newman's solo show titled "The Nigger Drawings" at Artists Space in 1979, and "Harlem On My Mind," an exhibition of all-white artists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Each of these exhibitions proved problematic for everyone involved: the artist, the institution, and the audience. The timeline for these exhibitions is important because it establishes the fact the cultural competence of these institutions or the art world at large had not evolved or advanced with the times. These examples are ones that have forced art institutions to address who they are and which public they are meant to serve. As I finished reading d 'Souza and began reading the other articles like The Function of the Studio by Daniel Buren and Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics by Claire Bishop, I imagined the exhibitions presented would have been less problematic if they were framed differently. I thought about the frame in which I encountered these artworks and what I would have thought of them if the first frame was not through D'Souza's analysis.

[micaramel]

Artist: Lygia Pape

Venue: Hauser & Wirth, New York

Date: September 6 – October 20, 2018

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, New York

Press Release:

A founding member of Brazil’s Neo-Concrete movement, Lygia Pape (1927 – 2004) valued art that favored the primacy of the viewer and his or her sensorial experience. Pape explored rich territory via the media of sculpture, drawing, engraving, filmmaking, and installation, and cemented her reputation as one of the most significant Brazilian artists of her generation. On view from 6 September through 20 October at Hauser & Wirth New York, 69th Street, this exhibition marks the gallery’s first solo presentation of Pape’s work in the United States since announcing worldwide representation of Projeto Lygia Pape in 2016. Spanning Pape’s multidisciplinary practice, this exhibition unpacks the artist’s singular vision, mining her profound and often playful approach to the physical and material experience of art, ultimately elucidating a deeply human understanding and unique reframing of geometry and abstraction.

Upon entering the exhibition visitors encounter Pape’s Amazoninos (1989 – 92), large iron wall-mounted sculptures that derive their names, colors, and shapes from an aerial view of the Amazon forest; these works synthesize Pape’s ongoing explorations of space, volume, color, and form. ‘Amazoninos Vermelho (Red Amazoninos)’ (1989 / 2003), and the massive five-part ‘Amazonino Vermelho e Preto (Red and Black Amazonino)’ (1989 / 2003), appear to spring forth from the walls, eliding the weight of their industrial composition and appearing at once geometric and organic. Here, the artist stresses a dynamic relationship between viewer, artwork, and architecture, encouraging a mode of interaction that takes shape over time as viewers move through the exhibition space.

One of Pape’s most emblematic works, ‘Ttéia 1A’ (1978 / 2018), occupies an additional space on the ground floor. The sublime, silver thread installation is part of the artist’s iconic Ttéia series, first conceived in 1978. The word ‘Ttéia,’ which Pape created, is an elision of the Portuguese word for ‘web’ and ‘teteia,’ a colloquial word for a graceful and delicate person or thing. Installed in a corner of the gallery, the groupings of thread intersect and weave, coursing through the space to create phantom lines across the walls.

In this ethereal series, Pape succeeded in delineating the depth and volume of triangular structure to explore and heighten an awareness of spatial relationships, eliciting a haptic response to both the object and its shadow. Testament to the significance of the Ttéias, Pape revisited the series in 2003, a year before she died, and produced a suite of intimately scaled sculptures composed of gold-plated copper. Pape realized ten unique variations of these rarely exhibited Ttéia works, nine of which are on view in this exhibition.

The second floor of the exhibition features two important artworks – ‘Jogo de Ténis (Tennis Game)’ (2001) and a series of collaborative collages produced with Concrete artist Ivan Serpa during the 1970s – that mark Pape’s increasing emphasis on participatory projects, collage, and video installations.

The exhibition concludes on the third floor with Pape’s early geometrical Tecelares (Weavings), woodcut prints from the 1950s that mark her transition from the Concrete to Neo-Concrete movement, of which she would become a founding member in 1959. Pape’s Tecelares have a direct lineage to her later Ttéia series; these works on paper comprise complex compositions that evoke a charged sense of materiality. Pape’s acute sensitivity to technique and material in these works allowed for what she believed was a ‘better presentation of the idea and the inventive richness.’

On the occasion of this exhibition, Hauser & Wirth will also stage Pape’s iconic participatory work ‘Roda dos Prazeres (Wheel of Pleasures)’ (1967) on Saturday 15 September at 3 pm on the rooftop of the 22nd Street gallery. The installation comprises a circular grouping of vessels filled with brightly hued liquids. Encouraging a sensorial engagement with the installation, Pape has provided viewers small medicine droppers that can be used to sample the colored solutions. The experience elicits sensations of both pleasure and dissatisfaction; the unlabeled liquids range in taste from pleasant to unpleasant. ‘In this way,’ Pape wrote about the installation in 1980, ‘an ambivalence of the senses was created: the eye saw one thing and was delighted, but the tongue might reject it. Or it could reinforce what the eye had already devoured, couldn’t it?’

This exhibition is accompanied by a forthcoming catalogue from Hauser & Wirth Publishers that includes a conversation between the artist’s daughter, Paula Pape, curator Paulo Herkenhoff, and poet Ferreira Gullar, with an additional commissioned text by author Alexander Alberro.

Link: Lygia Pape at Hauser & Wirth

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from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2yecrQD

[carliferruzzaart-blog]

Institutionalized Critique

Institutional critique 

Institutional critique is analyzing and assessing an art place- usually a museum or art gallery. It began in the 1960′s described as “something to attack aesthetically, politically, and theoretically” (Alberro). It brings questions about the purpose of art and where it is shown. According to Austin Blanton it is “an attempt to peek behind the curtain of the systems and people that make seemingly-anonymous organizations run.” (Blanton)  It consists of many purposes including to open artists up for “public scrutiny; others express their dissatisfaction with the hidden biases, power structures and commercial agendas underpinning museums and galleries” (Price).

Key Figures

Michael Asher was a conceptual artist, (he is also known as a “canonical” artist which represents power and hierarchy) who did installations at museums. He would rip off floors and walls to reveal a raw state of the galleries. For example in 1974 he took down a wall in the Copley Gallery Installation in LA to reveal an office separate from the exhibit. He is well known for exploring the significance of how where you place the art can signify the meaning of it, he expressed this by moving a bronze George Washington statue from outside the museum to an 18th century exhibit inside the museum in the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. 

Daniel Buren is a conceptual artist from France.  He had a piece he created in 1973 called “Within and beyond the frame” consisting of 19 banners; 9 in the gallery, 9 outside, and 1 in the middle connecting the outside and inside. The stripes were posted so they did not look like paintings in public, but once displayed, they were paintings. He used these banners as a threshold between inside the institution and outside social life. Buren uses the architectural structure of the museums to depict the importance of his work. Throughout his career, Buren has been focused on the context through which art is displayed and uses his work to draw attention to the characteristics that often are unnoticed; formal, political, ideological, etc.

Andrea Fraser views institutional critique as a way of presenting the museum instead of the artists. In her essay she states “ It is not a question of being against the institution: we are the institution. It is a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to.” (Fraser) In her work “Down the River” Fraser uses an audio recording from a prison and plays it in a completely empty gallery to create a threshold between social, cultural, and geographic division between museums and prisons. 

Advantages of traditional art spaces

Advantages include the fact that all of the art is in one place for people to come travel and see. It is also important in that these art spaces save traditional culture- giving the pieces a place to never be forgotten as well as giving people an in depth understanding of different traditions, customs, and religions. I agree with Dewey when he defines a museum as  “ the proper home for works of art, and in the promotion of the idea that they are apart from common life” (Dewey) in that without museums art may be lost- museums secure many works of art and give them a place to be as opposed to spread all over the world to where we may never see them again. 

Disadvantages

All exhibits essentially are designed the same- one space looks just like the other with the exception of the art it consists of which can become boring. Another disadvantage is the fact that the viewers are limited to being in a room viewing displays as opposed to expanding their perspective in more differentiated areas giving the art more meaning. 

Personal Experience

I definitely have experienced both the advantages and drawbacks in that I got to see a variety of art in one place and experience several different cultures yet because I was limited to just individual small exhibit rooms I feel as though it limited my experience. For example, with the piece Heaven from the Museum of Contemporary Art if the exhibit had been more separate from the others, even elaborated to the point where you were isolated in a room and had the ability to lay down listening to the music and viewing the piece I would have gotten more from the piece. A solution not limited to this piece but to other pieces  may be either making them more separate and giving them their own space that helps further the experience making it easier to interpret them, or even just having headphones with music corresponding to the piece or audio to cancel out the background distractions and lure you into the piece more.  

Sources

“Institutional Critique – Austin's Blanton Museum of Art.” Austins Blanton Museum of Art, blantonmuseum.org/chapter/institutional-critique/. 

Price, Nicola, director. Introduction to Institutional Critique. YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujE6ntrJdHM.

Alberro, Alexander, and Blake Stimson. Institutional Critique: an Anthology of Artists' Writings. MIT Press, 2011. 

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RESEARCH ON MATTA-CLARK.

Clearly articulating Matta-Clark’s approaches to architecture and form, this book has helped me understand his primary motives and methods for integrating notions of materiality, functionality and structure.

“There is a kind of complexity which comes from taking an otherwise completely normal, conventional (albeit anonymous) situation and redefining it, retranslating it into overlapping and multiple readings of conditions past and present. By undoing a building, [I open] a state of enclosure which had been preconditioned not only by physical necessity but by the industry that proliferates suburban and urban boxes as a pretext for insuring a passive, isolated consumer”.

Paradoxically, Matta-Clark’s cuts are still a form of architecture, one that uses “gaps, void places that were not developed” or that were covered over as contradictions in architectural and bureaucratic logic. His work thus exposes the private integration of compartmental living space, revealing how the family copes with the imposed social structure of its container. Matta-Clark’s cuts demonstrate this constructional imposition, along with our adaption to its concealed order, in the form of ”sculpture”. In this way his art works open up both the unconscious and historical memory.

Reference:

Graham, Dan; Alberro, Alexander. 1999. Two-Way Mirror Power: Selected Writings by Dan Graham on his Art. MIT Press.

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“The estate will begin to disappear as a cultural and historical entity, as a material embodiment of historical turns, and as a political fact.”

“The exhibition would take the form of a material archive or inventory of physical objects in a specially devised display that would underscore their status as evidentiary objects rather than subjects of merely aesthetic contemplation or art-historical interpretation.”

“Do you consider the works in question evidentiary objects, as David Joselit might term them, or visual witnesses? Beyond their ability to testify to certain historical dealings and a specific record of criminal events, as well as their providing a legal basis for restitution, what do these objects contribute to our understanding of twentieth-century cultural history? What do they tell us about cultural politics in postwar Germany, continuing through the present?”

- Adam Szymczyk

“But even more than either evidence or witness, the Gurlitt estate is a perfect example of what psychoanalyst Dori Laub and literary critic Shoshana Felman refer to as “testimony.”... Surprisingly, but with a poignancy and coincidental nature that is almost uncanny, the Gurlitt estate operates as a testimony to a radical crisis of a history that nonetheless remains, as such, at once unspeakable and inarticulable—a history that can no longer be accounted for, and formulated in, its own terms.” 

“Many collectors keep their cluster of objects for their own pleasure and remove them from public discourse. It seems to me that the more pertinent issue here is that now, when the fact of the many objects in this large, previously hidden collection has been revealed to the public, that very same public is still being denied the ability to contemplate the collection as a whole.”

- Alexander Alberro

“Whether privately or publicly owned, when such works go on public display in museums, the respective institution should be immediately obliged to declare the work’s origins. Hitler had assembled, i.e., plundered, a comprehensive collection to furnish an art museum planned for Linz in Austria. This is the source of works hanging on permanent display in museums that are described as being “on loan” or “on loan from the Federal Republic of Germany,” but without any indication whatsoever of their origins in Nazi collections.”

“In 1997, a number of French museums in Paris, Sèvres, Versailles, and elsewhere—including the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Centre Georges Pompidou—put nine hundred such works on display in an attempt to find their owners.”

“Following this line of thinking, you could claim that, to a certain extent, history occurs in the future. In this sense, history never ceases to relate to past narratives, to update and regenerate them, also producing ambiguities and contradictions. The sensationalizing of the Gurlitt case has reached such a degree that it threatens a qualitative change, reversal, or dilution of the core issue—illegitimately acquired or plundered art. To counteract this entropy of meaning, the strategies of concealment and obfuscation need to be examined and processes of disclosure set in motion by artistic means, which would expose latent conflicts and initiate a parsing of meaning of items in the Gurlitt estate.”

- Maria Eichhorn

“Depending on how it is presented, it could also give the uninitiated public an inkling that, no matter whether works prominently reveal such references, social and political implications are not foreign to the art of the past or of the present—nor are censorship, self-censorship, and the pressures and manipulations of the art market.”

- Hans Haacke

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[books] The Artist as Curator: An Anthology Edited by Elena Filipovic Texts by Alexander Alberro, Monica Amor and Carlos Basualdo, Biljana Ciric, Ekaterina Degot, Elena Filipovic, Claire Grace, Anthony Huberman, Dean Inkster, Alhena Katsof, William Krieger, Elisabeth Lebovici, Ana Longoni, James Meyer, Isabelle Moffat, Nina Möntmann, Natalie Musteata, Sandra Skurvida, Dirk Snauwaert, Lucy Steeds, Monika Szewczyk, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Afterword by Hans Ulrich Obrist. https://www.moussepublishing.com/products-page/product/artist-curator-anthology/ 

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Indigo Magazines

http://indigomagazines.com/2017/06/18/abstraction-in-reverse-the-reconfigured-spectator-in-mid-twentieth-century-latin-american-art/

Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art

Books and EBooks

by Alexander Alberro English | 2017 | ISBN: 022639395X | 368 pages | PDF | 12,5 MB

Download Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art

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Monica Bonvicini talks power, sex, architecture, abusing materials, identity, feminism, radical discourse, and Bruce Nauman in this interview with Alexander Alberro. http://ift.tt/2iJMxhn