 |
Photo By Heavy Meta
|
"When Faith Moves Mountains," an installation by
Francis Alÿs, contains all the best elements of
performance documentation.
|
Imagine the challenge. A young curator is asked to select a topic for an exhibition, produce a wish list of artists and then research and secure the loans for specific works of art. This is not an unusual task list for a curator. But what if this exhibition is for a building that does not yet exist?
What if the curator has been told he will not have a series of rooms to work with that move the visitor along a prescribed path with a clear floor plan? In fact, there will be no white gallery box spaces with proportions he can alter by building temporary walls.
On the contrary, the curator will have as his starting point, a complex, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of open and interlocking spaces, recently designed by an internationally renowned architect.
This was the challenge that faced curator, Thom Collins, when he joined the staff of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in March, 2001, and as he installed the Rosenthal Center's inaugural exhibition in late May 2003.
Collins has boldly met this challenge with a thematic exhibition whose aesthetic intent strategically compliments the architectural program. If architect Zaha Hadid's philosophy was one of dynamic spatial engagement, Collins would seek out art that proposed and initiated, via both its form and content, active social exchange and commentary.
Somewhere Better Than This Place, the exhibition's title, is taken from a work of art by artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It connotes the theme Collins sets forth, which links the 35 artists (or artistic teams) whose works he has assembled and installed throughout the rambling space of the new building. Each work of art investigates some aspect of the dominant culture, and in certain cases via this artistic critique, presents an alternative. Thus the art presents -- somewhere better than this place.
Large group exhibitions, by their very nature, have their pluses and minuses, which are frequently debated in the art press.
On the positive side, they offer the visitor an unparalleled opportunity to learn about many artists and thus see a variety of new works. Successful group exhibitions illustrate important trends, illuminating shared concerns among contemporary artists that otherwise go unnoticed and unexamined. Art history can be elucidated by timely and significant thematic group shows.
On the negative side, group exhibitions often try to accomplish too much. They include too many artists whose conflicting presentation formats, when exhibited side by side, battle with each other. The quality of the art shown might be uneven. The space allocated to one artist versus another might be undemocratic, resulting in unintentional favoritism. And depending on the way the works relate to one another, the overarching theme that supposedly brought them together might be obscured by the complexity of the assemblage.
All of the above, on the positive and negative sides, is true of Somewhere Better Than This Place. The exhibition is a daring undertaking with an intriguing theme, explored via the works of a diverse group of important artists from across the globe. Some of the art is spectacular and significant, installed to its best advantage; other pieces are less meaningful or crammed into small, difficult spaces that do not do justice to the art.
The curator's premise and his four interesting sub-themes are explained on a hanging text panel. It is difficult for the visitor, as he or she walks through the exhibition, to make sense of these important and illuminating themes because the building does not permit the sequential layout that allows the viewer to gradually discern and absorb these ideas.
The art had to be installed mostly just where it would fit. Thus the layout lacks a didactic component, one of the cornerstones of good exhibition design. This is a serious shortcoming -- not only for this exhibition, but also for all future exhibitions in this building -- that substantially reduces the average visitor's ability to comprehend the overall curatorial premise and how specific works of art support the thematic subcategories.
Nonetheless, Somewhere Better Than This Place should be applauded (and visited many times to fully understand) by all of us in this community, for its ambition, for its range and for its high-minded intent. It provides us all with an opportunity to see and experience a great deal of provocative and challenging contemporary art.
Those pieces that are representative of the artist's best work, that are given ample space separated off from the visual distraction and sound spill of adjacent spaces, and which require the viewer to invest time -- so that they have that experience of engagement, that the curator is after -- stand out as the show's star attractions. Space only allows me to mention three of my favorites.
As I sank into the low couch that is part of the work by Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zacklin, I was struck by this installation's relevance to Cincinnati. This pair of American artists created a work of art that juxtaposes 1970s home movies of their respective childhood birthday parties, backyard family gatherings, vacations at the beach and other family events. One side of the screen captures the home life of an African-American, Christian boy. The other presents the family of a girl from a white, Jewish home.
Today we are assaulted with the viewpoint that there are unbridgeable differences among categories of gender, race and religion. Biggers and Zacklin reveal, through their art, only similarities. They suggest that in America today, we might look toward socio-economic factors as significant cultural indicators rather than fixating on classifications of supposed difference.
 |
Photo By Heavy Meta
|
The Francis Alys installation, "When Faith Moves Mountains," contains all the best elements of performance documentation. Rather than just offering the viewer a single photograph or video of a prior performance that we obviously did not experience directly, Alys creates a room-installation that captures the original performance's intent. He places the visitor in a new environment that communicates without claiming to replicate the original performance experience. He achieves this with three video screens, a soundtrack and a creative table display that outlines and documents the original.
A line of Peruvians works in unison to move a hillside a short distance. We see the action repeated again and again from varying camera angles with the continuous sound of the shovels hitting the dirt. The result is strikingly poignant. Alys intends for the event, which involved hundreds of local citizens, to evolve into local lore, becoming an inspirational allegory that supports Christ's pronouncement that faith can literally and figuratively move mountains. In Peru, this translates into hope and the possibility for a new social order.
"Forty-Part Motet" by Janet Cardiff is a sculpture and sound installation. Forty speakers are arranged in a circle. They are mounted on stands so that visually each becomes a figure, surrogates for the singers whose individual voices emanate from their speaker-heads. One can walk around the circle and hear one voice at a time or move towards the center and hear the voices merge into sacred Renaissance court music. The experience is transformative. One is inspired and moved -- moved that is, from one emotional state to another, just as is intended with an exhibition titled Somewhere Better Than This Place.
Somewhere Better Than This Place will be on display at the Contemporary Arts Center through Nov. 9. Jean E. Feinberg is the former curator of contemporary art at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Printer-friendly version
