Abstract/Object
by Alex Wisser
artists: Adrian Clement, Alexander Jackson Wyatt, Andre Flament, Angela Stretch, Annalice Creighton, Anthony Bartok, Francesca Mataraga, Georgina Pollard, Goran Tomic, Hayley Hill, Josh Harle, Julia Kennedy-Bell, Muzi Li, Melanie E. Khava, Ro Murray, Susie Williams, Tom Isaacs, Zeo Ledux
CURATIORIAL STATEMENT:
Like an object, this idea is describable from several perspectives, three of which I will present here.
PERSPECTIVE 1:
Throughout the 20th Centry, art discourse has questioned and critically excoriated the context in which art is placed and displayed. From a very broad perspective one might conclude that nowhere on this earth is there a space that does not somehow degrade, corrode, or diminish the artwork that it contains. On the one hand there is the home of the collector, into which the artwork enters only through its conversion into commodity fetish through the process of its purchase. Once there it must endure its humiliated condition as an object amongst other objects, functioning in the service of decoration and the symbolic production of status and prestige. On the other hand, the gallery space is perceived as a sterile, negative space, scrubbed of any reference to or residue of the outside world, even to the point of denying the bodily presence of the viewer. Abstract/Object is an attempt to superimpose these two spaces, creating a third paradoxical space in which the status of the object is made uncertain: at once challenged by its placement in a context permeated by the every day world, and at the same time a space abstracted and rarefied by its gallery status.
PERSPECTIVE 2
At the same time, the 20th century also saw the growth and agglomeration of mass media coalesce into an integrated, continuous plane of representation, virtualizing much of contemporary life. Forced to question its own powers of representation in a world oversaturated with virtual content, art began to look outside the frame to the potentials of presentation, consistently challenging the boundaries between art and life. In so doing art inverts its traditional role from the production of virtualities to the presentation of actualities, developing an array of strategies that emphasize the presence of the object, the embodied nature of the experience of art, and the object status of the work. These strategies are diverse, and range between emphasizing the heightened presence of the object to obscuring the difference between the object and the everyday. Abstract/Object is designed to challenge the audience to discern the difference between the objects of art (which won’t be marked as such) and the domestic everyday objects from my home. At once, the art object is made to compete with the everyday objects while the everyday object is changed by its placement within a space that insists that it be looked on as art. In this way, this show is intended to test the artwork, to show how it stands up as art in an environment permeated by non-art and to question the entire process.
PERSPECTIVE 3
This installation does not pretend to do anything new. The tensions and conflicts it explores have predominated art production for as long as it has been called modern. Abstract/Object can be considered a performance of these tensions, presenting these concerns through a condensed, unified platform that engages their historical dimension with local and contemporary practice.
Alex Wisser 