Ben Kinmont
02 Apr - 01 May 2012
BEN KINMONT
Prospectus Paris
2 April – 1 May 2012
Since the late 1980s, Ben Kinmont (Born 1963 Burlington, Vermont, USA) has been interested in interpersonal communication as a means of addressing the problems of contemporary society. His sculptures and actions attempt to establish a direct, personal relationship between the artist and the viewer, using the work as a mediator. If art is supposed to be an agency of intellectual and emotional challenge, then the artist concludes that the audience should also be addressed beyond the institutional frame of the gallery and the museum, and that contact should be more direct.
Kinmont’s practice is primarily made up of various projects which occur outside of art institutions. From these projects he makes an archive that contains everything related to the organization and development of a given project including letters, contracts, sketches, photographs, video, watercolors, and sculpture. If an archive is acquired, the purchaser signs a contract which stipulates that he or she must make the archive available to the public and add relevant future material. As such, the collector becomes an archivist as he or she helps to make transparent the project itself.
Prospectus is a traveling survey show in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material includes project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from the Antinomian Press, and various photographs and sculptural objects. At the Kadist Art Foundation, the exhibition will concentrate on the notion of exchange and economy through the presentation of six projects from 1992 to the present.
As a preview of the antiquarian book fair at the Grand Palais, Kadist presents Kinmont’s on-going project in the form of a bookselling business Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (begun 1998). This project will be contextualized by earlier works such as The Materialization of life into alternative economies, a curated show from 1996 and I need you, a project conducted in dialogue with passersby on the street in New York in 1992.
The works selected for the Kadist show investigate different modes of economy developed through an artistic practice. In some cases Kinmont redistributes the art market value of a project to participants and in other cases he adopts other economies as an alternative mode of exchange with people. The works also consider how artists develop a sustainable economy as an art project and when they decide to stop their practice to become something else. With all of these strategies at stake, art becomes a visible part of the social fabric towards a “materialization of life”.
Within the context of his investigations into various business and social economies, Kinmont will activate his Digger Dug project. This project looks at the possibility of helping others through an artistic practice and the ethical concerns surrounding project art. As part of the Digger Dug and for the show at Kadist, Kinmont will issue a new edition of « ethical considerations in project art », a text he wrote with his graduate students in 2005. The new edition will include commentary by Laurel George, a cultural anthropologist teaching at NYU and be issued as a broadside to be posted in the streets of Paris during the time of the show.
Different perspectives on Kinmont’s work will be presented in the form of an interview with artist Emilie Parendeau and two lectures, one by art historian Sébastien Pluot on the artist group Parasite of which Kinmont was a member (13 April) and the other by curator Krist Gruijthuijsen on gastronomy, self-cannibalism and the art market (26 April). Artist Hugo Bregeau, Kinmont’s former assistant, will be available to assist the public in handling the archives for the duration of the show.
Prospectus Paris
2 April – 1 May 2012
Since the late 1980s, Ben Kinmont (Born 1963 Burlington, Vermont, USA) has been interested in interpersonal communication as a means of addressing the problems of contemporary society. His sculptures and actions attempt to establish a direct, personal relationship between the artist and the viewer, using the work as a mediator. If art is supposed to be an agency of intellectual and emotional challenge, then the artist concludes that the audience should also be addressed beyond the institutional frame of the gallery and the museum, and that contact should be more direct.
Kinmont’s practice is primarily made up of various projects which occur outside of art institutions. From these projects he makes an archive that contains everything related to the organization and development of a given project including letters, contracts, sketches, photographs, video, watercolors, and sculpture. If an archive is acquired, the purchaser signs a contract which stipulates that he or she must make the archive available to the public and add relevant future material. As such, the collector becomes an archivist as he or she helps to make transparent the project itself.
Prospectus is a traveling survey show in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material includes project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from the Antinomian Press, and various photographs and sculptural objects. At the Kadist Art Foundation, the exhibition will concentrate on the notion of exchange and economy through the presentation of six projects from 1992 to the present.
As a preview of the antiquarian book fair at the Grand Palais, Kadist presents Kinmont’s on-going project in the form of a bookselling business Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (begun 1998). This project will be contextualized by earlier works such as The Materialization of life into alternative economies, a curated show from 1996 and I need you, a project conducted in dialogue with passersby on the street in New York in 1992.
The works selected for the Kadist show investigate different modes of economy developed through an artistic practice. In some cases Kinmont redistributes the art market value of a project to participants and in other cases he adopts other economies as an alternative mode of exchange with people. The works also consider how artists develop a sustainable economy as an art project and when they decide to stop their practice to become something else. With all of these strategies at stake, art becomes a visible part of the social fabric towards a “materialization of life”.
Within the context of his investigations into various business and social economies, Kinmont will activate his Digger Dug project. This project looks at the possibility of helping others through an artistic practice and the ethical concerns surrounding project art. As part of the Digger Dug and for the show at Kadist, Kinmont will issue a new edition of « ethical considerations in project art », a text he wrote with his graduate students in 2005. The new edition will include commentary by Laurel George, a cultural anthropologist teaching at NYU and be issued as a broadside to be posted in the streets of Paris during the time of the show.
Different perspectives on Kinmont’s work will be presented in the form of an interview with artist Emilie Parendeau and two lectures, one by art historian Sébastien Pluot on the artist group Parasite of which Kinmont was a member (13 April) and the other by curator Krist Gruijthuijsen on gastronomy, self-cannibalism and the art market (26 April). Artist Hugo Bregeau, Kinmont’s former assistant, will be available to assist the public in handling the archives for the duration of the show.