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Curating Now (Part II):
An Ongoing, Informal Report
Eva González-Sancho,
Bruce Grenville, Enrico Lunghi and Terrie Sultan conclude our
assessment of curating as a field in transition, and provide
historical and conceptual contexts for their own work.
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Pedro
Cabrita Reis,
True
Gardens #3 [Dijon],
2004, Frac Bourgogne (courtesy of Frac Bourgogne, Dijon; André
Morin, Paris) |
Eva González-Sancho
What is the most memorable curatorial project you have ever
encountered? What was important about it?
The most interesting projects are commissioned works for
specific places and, often, projects for which the exhibition
room is an anachrony. Iâm thinking of my experience of Walter De
Mariaâs Earth Room in New York and of Lara Almarceguiâs project
I curated here in Dijon, a related intervention that transposed
the physical reality of a place.
Define your own curatorial practice and trajectory.
My first exhibitions were monographic and featured new
installations by Dora García, Imogen Stidworthy, Harald Thys,
and Michael van den Abeele at the Etablissement dâen face, an
art center then in an old factory in Brussels. I rapidly decided
to move the Etablissement to a smaller and more austere space.
The new place inscribed itself in the city to which it was open
through a glass window. It worked mostly as a production house
for projects. In this space, I developed Legal Space/Public
Space, which dealt with the development of public space.
At the FRAC Burgundy in Dijon, I am exploring many different
contemporary questions raised by relationships with space:
architecture and urbanism, private and public space, legislation
and individual freedom, and exhibition space. I am also adding
works that deal with space to the collection. The collection
already features works by Dan Graham, Maria Norman and Peter
Downsbrough. I now buy works that are somehow, and in different
ways, in dialogue with them: Jordi Colomer, Jonas Dahlberg, Lara
Almarcegui, for example. Iâve also been producing and presenting
solo exhibitions of new works by Guillaume Leblon, Pedro Cabrita
Reis, Lara Almarcegui and Peter Downsbrough.
How would you chart the development of curatorial practice over
the last decade?
I
do not have a precise opinion on that. Looking at group
exhibitions today, I realize that the fashionable way is to
display a simple addition of individualities. This doesnât
really interest me.
What curatorial initiative would you like to see undertaken?
What is needed now?
I
deplore the difficulty of intervening in places other that the
exhibition room. Iâm thinking about the real possibilities of
public space. I also deplore the pressure that institutions put
on projects, the pressure that museumsâ established ways of
programming exert on curatorial and artistic projects. We miss
out on numerous kinds of practices that directly question the
temporality of artworks and their public reception.
Eva González-Sancho
is Director of FRAC Bourgogne in Dijon.
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Installation view of the
Franz West
exhibition curated by Bruce Grenville and organized by the
Vancouver Art Gallery, May 28÷September 5, 2005
(courtesy of the Vancouver Art Gallery, British
Columbia, Canada; photo: Tomas Svab, Vancouver Art Gallery) |
Bruce Grenville
What is the most memorable curatorial project you have ever
encountered? What was important about it?
The exhibition Lâinforme, mode dâemploi curated by Yve-Alain
Bois and Rosalind Krauss at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1996
remains the most memorable curatorial project that I have
encountered. It grouped an unexpected range of artists within a
thesis that was surprisingly compelling and yet entirely
questionable. The curatorsâ unexpected juxtapositions of
historical and contemporary works and their rejection of a
linear narrative created an extraordinary opportunity for a
reinterpretation of the history and legacy of Surrealism.
Define your own curatorial practice and trajectory.
I
began my curatorial practice as a freelance curator, working for
various galleries across Canada. In another context, I have
described this period of my practice as parasitic. Since I did
not have a public body I had to use the body of an institution
to survive. It made little difference if the institution was a
parallel gallery, a public gallery, or a private gallery. The
institution provided a site, an audience, and access to funding.
In exchange, the exhibitions I produced brought the institution
a type of art and an area of expertise to which they might not
otherwise have access. But the parasite is also by definition a
kind of interference, a noise that interrupts. The parasite
upsets the body; it causes an itch or a fever. It is a static
that disrupts the flow within a system. This is what I saw as
the most important part of my parasitic existence. I saw it as
my role to interfere with the institutionâs process of
representation, and where possible to place it in doubt. Where
the institution proposed to bring forward a history of art, I
saw it as my role to disrupt that narrative, not to offer an
alternative history, but rather to reveal the manner in which
histories are constructed. Where the institution sought to
define the parameters of a practice or to document a body of
work, I sought to fragment our sense of that body, to see it in
the Deleuzian sense as a body without organs.
Later I joined the staff of a public gallery first in Saskatoon,
then in Edmonton, and now in Vancouver. My practice could no
longer be described as parasitical, but remained defined by
doubt. For me, the primary force at work within an exhibition
necessarily deploys doubt÷doubt about the social and artistic
narratives that seek to exclude the possibility of doubt.
Significantly, this doubt is sustained by living and working
within the very same conditions that seek to deny it.
How would you chart the development of curatorial practice over
the last decade?
In general, I would point to an escalation and acceleration of
curatorial practice in the past decade. Massive exhibitions,
grand narratives, and complex installations are produced using a
just-in-time-delivery system borrowed from manufacturing and
merchandising industries. The best curatorial projects offer an
unprecedented insight into contemporary artistic practice on a
global scale. The downside is a vast number of exhibitions put
together with little forethought and no curatorial investment.
What curatorial initiative would you like to see undertaken?
What is needed now?
I
would like to see an effective counter-narrative developed that
would provide an antidote to the monolithic presence of the
commercial gallery system and the concurrent reduction of
artistic practice to a narrative of commodity production.
Bruce Grenville
is Senior Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1997÷present).
His most recent curatorial endeavors were the exhibitions
Franz West and Wang Du: Parade. He is also the
coordinating curator of Massive Change: The Future of Global
Design.
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Installation view of
Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration,
2003, an exhibition curated by Terrie Sultan and organized by
the Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of
Houston. This exhibition traveled around the U.S. |
Terrie Sultan
What is the most memorable curatorial project you
have ever encountered? What was important about it?
The Chuck Close Prints: Process and
Collaboration exhibition was certainly one of my most
memorable projects. This was a true voyage of discovery because
I learned so much about the complex process of making such
large-scale projects. I was given a real inside view of Closeâs
studio practice and his interactions with the master printers
because I was able to work with them over such a long period of
time. I believe that the exhibition and accompanying publication
provide the public access to information that is almost never
revealed: how the artist thinks, works through problems, relates
to those around him who are essential to the process. The
exhibition and book helped make this mysterious thing called
creativity transparent. This is an essential aspect of what I
hope for in my curatorial practice.
Define your own curatorial practice and
trajectory.
I am especially interested in demystifying the
creative process÷to privilege how creative decisions are made
and why an artist chooses a particular direction÷rather than
focusing on the ăobject of value.ä In all my curatorial work, I
seek to make that process available to the viewer.
I began my career as an artist÷or rather, an art
student. I received a BFA from Syracuse University College of
Visual and Performing Arts, having entered the program with the
intention of becoming a professional painter. In completing
this rigorous program, it became clear to me that I wasnât
inherently a maker of objects myself, but was keenly intrigued
by those who were. Studying art history gave me a solid
foundation, but academic research eventually became less
compelling to me than spending time with living, working
artists. I chose to pursue the ăpracticeä path of a MA in Museum
Studies instead of a degree in art history, and then began to
work my way up through the ranks. The path was, however,
anything but linear. Before starting graduate school, I worked
as a Peace Corps volunteer running a newspaper in Western Samoa,
in market research for an advertising firm, as new business
development manager for an architecture firm, and as programmer
for a commercial gallery. The Museum Studies program opened up
the museum world to me and thatâs when my path became clear.
How would you chart the development of curatorial
practice over the last decade?
It seems that curatorial practice has become more
theoretical since 1990, with a strong focus on exhibitions
exploring broad themes in contemporary culture over traditional
monographic explorations of an artistâs career. Programs
dedicated to curatorial practice (such as Bard,
de Appel,
etc.) have
contributed to the growth of this aspect of curatorial practice.
I see this as a positive development conceptually. Although also
prominent, the rise of the curator as ăstarä or ăstar-makerä is
less appealing to me.
What curatorial initiative would you like to see
undertaken? What is needed now?
I would like to see more initiatives toward in
depth explorations of the work of under-recognized artists (such
as Lee Bontecue or James Surls, for example) and less emphasis
on the ănewest, youngest, hottestä artist. I believe that we are
ignoring artists who have made significant contributions to the
contemporary discourse in the quest for the new.
Terrie Sultan
is Director of Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University
of Houston (2000÷present). Prior to her appointment at Blaffer,
she was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Corcoran Gallery of
Art in Washington, DC. Over the course of her twenty-year career
she has organized more than fifty exhibitions with accompanying
publications. Her most recent projects include Chuck Close
Prints: Process and Collaboration, Jessica Stockholder:
Kissing the Wall, and James Surls: The Splendora Years.
In 2003, Ms. Sultan was named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and
Letters by the French government for her work encouraging
cultural exchange between France and the U.S.
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Sylvie
Blocher,
La
sauteuse (lapsus nˇ 1),
2002, video installation (courtesy of Casino Luxembourg; photo:
Sylvie Blocher) |
Enrico Lunghi
What is the
most memorable curatorial project you have ever encountered?
What was important about it?
Quite a few
projects have marked me significantly, each in a different way.
For instance, Bert Theisâ Potemkin Lock at the 1995
Venice Biennial was an incredible adventure. We struggled
greatly to realize this project with almost no money, no team
(the artist, myself, and our girlfriends) and at the limits of
legality. Located between Belgiumâs and the Netherlandsâ
pavilions, it was a wood construction painted white and
accessible through a corridor where Marcel Duchamp could be
heard rapping. Behind the façade was a little garden with
reclining chairs. It was very successful÷actually the only
ănationalä participation by a pavilion-less country in the
Giardini that year. Thatâs quite a performance·
Another
important project for me was a series of three exhibitions÷Un
bel été, Stanley Brouwn, and Un bel été 3÷which
I co-curated with Michel Assenmaker and Eric Brunier between
1997 and 2003. This unique collaborative experience allowed us
to share ideas, and to reflect on the roles and responsibilities
of exhibitions, institutions, curators, and artists.
Finally, to
mention just another one (but I could go on·), the presentation
of Annick and Anton Herbertâs collection in 2000 was also
memorable: an intense dialogue developed with these wonderful
collectors, as we were trying to understand their thirty-year
commitment to contemporary art.
Define your
own curatorial practice and trajectory.
I studied
engineering before I turned to art. Somehow, this helps me see
things from another perspective. After traditional studies of
art history, I worked as an assistant at the National Museum in
Luxembourg. The focus was on ancient art there, and I helped
organize many exhibitions of Old Mastersâ works. This was really
interesting and it taught me a lot about work in an institution.
At the same time, I wrote articles about contemporary art in
Luxembourg and about exhibitions abroad for newspapers and
magazines. I struggled to earn money to live and gain experience
in a world I hardly knew.
I curated my
first show in 1994 with Wim Beeren: it was called Rendez-vous
provoqué, and featured works by Dutch and Luxembourg
artists. To my great surprise, it generated a lot of discussion
in our city. I curated Luxembourgâs participation at the 1995
Venice Biennale, and again in 1999. A small team came together
in 1995 to launch the Casino Luxembourg, which opened in 1996.
Here, I seek to engage the context in which our institution
operates, to transform it slowly, and to readapt the institution
to this ever-changing context. This dialogue is essential to me.
Such engagement with different contexts has led to projects like
Re:Location 1-7 / Shake in 2002-2004, for instance.
How would you
chart the development of curatorial practice over the last
decade?
The growing
number of art institutions and the use of contemporary art as a
socio-economical engine emphasize the event character of
curatorial practice and lead to the spectacularization of both
curatorial and artistic practices. Itâs interesting to see that
biennials and art fairs are now the meeting points for the art
world and the most discussed÷or, at least, the most
promoted÷events, even in the specialized art press. Very, very
few shows still attract attention because of their inherent
qualities: marketing and promotion are better tools for success
than work based on knowledge and its transmission. Both art and
curatorial practice seem to follow the generalized social trends
towards managerial thinking with a narrow economic horizon,
despite all claims of being intellectually independent and
philosophically prospective practices. I think itâs everyoneâs
responsibility to choose what kind of game to play. Itâs very
hard to be out of the mainstream and to follow sincere and
personal feelings, probably like it always was. Yet, to me, itâs
still the most existentially satisfying experience.
What
curatorial initiative would you like to see undertaken? What is
needed now?
I canât speak
about what is needed in general·. The world÷of which the art
world is a little part÷will get what most of its people are
dreaming of, and what they are ready to fight for.
Iâm interested
in giving artists the opportunity to show their works freely and
to communicate this intellectual and esthetic experience to as
many human beings as possible. This supposes the development of
sustainable institutional tools and long-term human relations. I
like to follow the work of artists over years÷as I have with
Sylvie Blocher, Simone Decker, Sam Samore, Nedko Solakov, Grazia
Toderi, and others. I like to develop long-term exchanges with
curators (for Un bel été, Re: Location, and other
projects) and with the public (around the Casino Luxembourg for
ten years). I also like to trade experiences, develop
possibilities for shared knowledge, and link artistic practices
across European countries. Much needs to be done in order to
improve communication between artists from Eastern and Western
Europe for instance.
Iâm less
interested in following geo-strategic trends that are beyond my
human experience, even if Iâm aware of the limitations that this
implies. I know that it is not very fashionable to proceed like
this, but I still prefer the pleasure of aesthetic and
intellectual independence over the comfort of business as usual.
Enrico Lunghi
is Artistic Director of the Casino Luxembourg.
CURATING NOW Part 1
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