curated by_vienna 2012: art or life. aesthetics and biopolitics
21 Sep - 25 Oct 2012
Jonathan Monk, Leopold Kessler - Galerie Andreas Huber, 21.9. - 25.10.2012, Vienna, Installation view, Photo: Georg Petermichl
DETECTIVE
Curated by: Adam Carr
Suspected Artists:
Meriç Algün Ringborg
Christian Burnoski
Sean Edwards
Ryan Gander
Leopold Kessler
Jonathan Monk
Alek O.
Kirsten Pieroth
Wilfredo Prieto
With:
Alfred Rupf
Criminologist and former
Head Colonel of the Police
Department of Airport
Vienna, Schwechat.
How do we look at and interpret works of art? To what extent does the role of
mediation within an exhibition govern, frame and impact upon our viewing
experience? What would happen if information surrounding and part of an
exhibition, particularly texts interpreting the artwork on display, were written
by an individual whose profession is not synonymous with the visual arts? And
what if the artworks on display would find in this individual and their
interpretation a necessary guide for the viewer – a lens through which the
artworks and the exhibition itself might need to be seen and understood? These
are some of central aspects and features of the exhibition Detective and
questions that it puts to test, presenting artworks that alight from and connect
with such aspects, together with the installation of the exhibition and the
mediation material it involves .
On the installation of the exhibition, a detective has been invited to visit the
gallery and investigate the artworks on view. He has written a number of reports
on each artwork that describe how they been achieved and by whom. To support
each of the detective’s statements and their overall task, evidence surrounding
the artists – detailing their practice, previous works and biography – was
supplied to him prior to his visit. The detective’s resulting reports are placed
inside the gallery space for public view and are be accompanied by
documentation of his visit.
While the detectives’ reports act to assist the viewer, the exhibition also insists
that viewers scrutinize the works on view carefully for themselves – to look and
to look again, in order to draw individual conclusions and to ‘solve’ what exactly
has taken place in the exhibition and by whom. The artworks, by a range of
international artists, include both new commissions and existing work, all of
which deliberately obscure simplistic readings and rather elicit the viewer to
imagine, detect and almost solve how they may have been accomplished
Detective gives an opportunity for artwork to exist and be presented outside of
the frameworks in which they are most commonly exhibited, mediated and
studied. Colliding the boundaries between art, its documentation and
interpretation, it also emphasizes new possibilities for the viewer, offering a
unique exhibition experience. The exhibition and the works its involve look at
how somebody else could write and help form a viewer’s experience of an
exhibition; how a viewer could see artworks and be guided through an exhibition
through somebody else’s eyes.
The exhibition draws an analogy between how a curator might look and analyze
an object of art differently from other people and how a detective might do the
same with an object or situation, and fuses these two separate ways of looking
together.
Adam Carr
Curated by: Adam Carr
Suspected Artists:
Meriç Algün Ringborg
Christian Burnoski
Sean Edwards
Ryan Gander
Leopold Kessler
Jonathan Monk
Alek O.
Kirsten Pieroth
Wilfredo Prieto
With:
Alfred Rupf
Criminologist and former
Head Colonel of the Police
Department of Airport
Vienna, Schwechat.
How do we look at and interpret works of art? To what extent does the role of
mediation within an exhibition govern, frame and impact upon our viewing
experience? What would happen if information surrounding and part of an
exhibition, particularly texts interpreting the artwork on display, were written
by an individual whose profession is not synonymous with the visual arts? And
what if the artworks on display would find in this individual and their
interpretation a necessary guide for the viewer – a lens through which the
artworks and the exhibition itself might need to be seen and understood? These
are some of central aspects and features of the exhibition Detective and
questions that it puts to test, presenting artworks that alight from and connect
with such aspects, together with the installation of the exhibition and the
mediation material it involves .
On the installation of the exhibition, a detective has been invited to visit the
gallery and investigate the artworks on view. He has written a number of reports
on each artwork that describe how they been achieved and by whom. To support
each of the detective’s statements and their overall task, evidence surrounding
the artists – detailing their practice, previous works and biography – was
supplied to him prior to his visit. The detective’s resulting reports are placed
inside the gallery space for public view and are be accompanied by
documentation of his visit.
While the detectives’ reports act to assist the viewer, the exhibition also insists
that viewers scrutinize the works on view carefully for themselves – to look and
to look again, in order to draw individual conclusions and to ‘solve’ what exactly
has taken place in the exhibition and by whom. The artworks, by a range of
international artists, include both new commissions and existing work, all of
which deliberately obscure simplistic readings and rather elicit the viewer to
imagine, detect and almost solve how they may have been accomplished
Detective gives an opportunity for artwork to exist and be presented outside of
the frameworks in which they are most commonly exhibited, mediated and
studied. Colliding the boundaries between art, its documentation and
interpretation, it also emphasizes new possibilities for the viewer, offering a
unique exhibition experience. The exhibition and the works its involve look at
how somebody else could write and help form a viewer’s experience of an
exhibition; how a viewer could see artworks and be guided through an exhibition
through somebody else’s eyes.
The exhibition draws an analogy between how a curator might look and analyze
an object of art differently from other people and how a detective might do the
same with an object or situation, and fuses these two separate ways of looking
together.
Adam Carr