Walls and Streets of Art, Relationally-speaking

That imperious-sounding term ‘relational aesthetics’ might have been first introduced to me at theanyspacewhatever exhibition at the Guggenheim, as I reviewed here, but like so many things one jives with, I’ve started to find it everywhere. It’s not exactly that the exhibition so sensitized me to my surroundings that every piece of litter on New York’s streets makes me want to sing hallelujahs, although relational aesthetics does strive for that effect. Rather, I see in work I have already been following the same aesthetic tools of surprise, fun, ephemerality, untraditional medium, and irreverence, and fueling their creation the hopeful belief that the experience of life is beautiful.

The Wooster Collective, whose blog I follow, is “dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets” thus taking relational aesthetics one step further than using the exhibition as a medium, as street art creates a medium out of bare concrete and brick. The art it showcases is submitted from all over, so like the Guggenheim’s group show it is an egalitarian effort, and shows the range of diversity, from a bum’s hut in Poland to this Election Day poster.

Had they been punnier, they would have said “Chews with your gum,” but not everybody can be as clever as me.

Street art fits into the category of relational aesthetics. An article on the founders of Wooster Collective from 2006 discusses the tenants of street art much line relational aesthetics:

1. Location…A work of street art reclaims the public space and the best street art has a context, builds a relationship with its environment, dialogs with the city…
2. Surprise and delight: the works tap into our emotions and we get that WTF ??? moment…
3. Have something to say…the best pieces do not necessarily make a strong political statement but they will make you see the city under a different light. Artists let
passersby make their own interpretation of the work…

‘Relational aesthetics’, then, is a way of taking art out of frames and putting it in different, often surprising, relations to the viewer, and how it affects one’s perception of the object, which is not necessarily an object but a wall or hole that makes you reevaluate your surroundings. The blog form is suited to street art; it constantly changes rather than being fixed, is fragmentary rather than whole, and both mediums originated outside mainstream channels of expression and are becoming more recognized.

Another blog I follow, Art is Everywhere, tries to document the beauty of everyday objects by taking things apart, rearranging them, and photographing them for the web. It tries to resensitize people to their surroundings, and thus to the beauty and charm of life. As it’s states:

Observing the surrounds from different points of view can change the perception
of the reality. Among the endless possible points of view, we can find the one
more near to the beauty: that is to make art. Why should everybody make art? To
seek for the beautiful in the daily things it undoubtedly helps us to…live
better.

And that’s a lovely sentiment to be surprised with, in anyspace anywhere.

Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenhiem

I groaned along with a few other people when the black and white film we were watching on beanbag chairs stopped in the middle, apparently on a continuous loop that never finishes. Since I had finished my free espresso, I got up and someone else jetted into my seat. The espresso bar’s line had died down, and people mingled up and down the white ramp. Where was I?

–the not-so-stuffy Guggenheim. The Guggenheim in New York has taken on a playful approach this fall, with an “invitation to a core group of these artists—Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carstenller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija—to collectively formulate a scenario for an exhibition,” according to its press release for theanyspacewhatever.

‘Relational aesthetics’ makes an intimidating phrase. However, these artists, who take the exhibition as a medium, have turned the Guggenheim into a humanized and fun space where suddenly everything starts to look like art. The museum has been transformed into one sprawling art playground, where the whole experience becomes a user-friendly and interrelated series of experiences as one ascends the circular ramp. It starts with the marquee of flashing lights at the entrance, but this theatrical experience is one where the viewer is the star. The bare white spiral of the interior is punctuated with a plethora of details that humanize the space. On walking in, one looks up to see a glittering starry sky and down to see a Pinocchio submerged face down in the museum’s small pool. What’s the connection between these works? Only that they share the space with each other, created to work together to draw the viewer into the space, and make them more aware of their surroundings.

It works on you subtly at first, but becomes more and more interesting. I took my shoes off to watch part of a documentary on some cushions next to one of the TVs on the first level, thereby making myself part of the exhibition as I discovered when girls took photos of the scene, and me, from the balcony above. Associative chains of black words seemed randomly typed both in placement and meaning at first. They never take a structured narrative, but one becomes more in tune with a generalized significance. The sound of falling water immerses the viewer as he walks through a bare white tunnel, then he is lost in a brown cardboard maze with holes that you can peep through and art embedded where you are least likely to look. After a set of hotel bedroom furniture on a round glass platform, you arrive at my favorite part, the Illy espresso bar next to the beanbag movie theatre. Eventually, you reach a sign at the top telling you you have reached the end, and it really feels like a you have completed a journey.
This process-oriented way of experiencing the exhibit made me feel like a child, uninhibited. This is the kind of space where you can touch the art, drink the art, and walking through it makes you a part of the art. These ordinary objects, beds or words like half-formed thoughts, could be found outside the Guggenheim’s walls. The New York Times reported that, “For a price and with a reservation, up to two people can spend the night. (Like so many must-dos in New York, it is sold out.)” Does it get more interactive than that?

It will be up until January 7, 2009, and in conjunction with the Catherine Opie retrospective also being exhibited, makes for a fun day at the museum. Instead of being boxed into to rectangular room and seeing things in gilt frames, you see Frank Gehry’s design fully exploited in this spiral-patterned fun house. Instead of being told where to look and how, you are let loose to participate and peek where you like. How refreshing.

Guggenhiem Bilboa, pass that Cy Twombly to NYC!

Cy Twombly’s major retrospective is going up at the Guggenheim Bilbao. According to ArtInfo, this retrospective also coincides with the artist’s 80th birthday. So if the Gugg. Bilbao has this great exhibition going up tomorrow, NYC should be getting it soon, right? Let’s hope so. This collection of almost 100 of Twombley’s works would make my year.

This exhibition will highlight the series 9 Discourses pictured above, as well as other large scale series he has done, such as Le Quattro Stagione, and sculptures and drawings.

Invierno, Quattro Stagioni (1993-94)

Twombley, a fellow Southerner, is one of my favorite contemporary artist. His work is evocative and painterly in a smearing, emotional kind of way that still manages to impress with restraint and control. Le Quattro Stagione never fails to leave me spellbound, from when I first saw it at the Tate Modern to when I rediscovered it in the atrium of MoMA here in New York. At least now I know where it went.

In their press release for the exhibition, the museum states, “Committed to collecting Twombly’s work, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has recently acquired the series Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963). The work around which the exhibition is designed, it consists of nine distinct canvases and was the first of the artist’s series to be conceived as a unified whole….[it] offers a closer look at the spirit of this marvellous artist who, as exhibition curator Carmen Giménez points out, ‘not only irradiates a fascinating personal magic, but has also taken us to the most intricate frontiers of contemporary painting.'”

The below painting, from his 2007 show Blooming a scattering of blossoms and other things that I tragically missed at Gagosian, due primarily to Gagosian confusing me with the multiple addresses that make up his empire, has not been as well received in some circles. However, some found it particularly enticing. One, for example, was the French woman arrested for kissing it, later claiming “It was an act of love.” Untitled