calendario eventi  :: 

X

31/8/2012

Two exhibitions

SFMoMA, San Francisco

Ben Kinmont
Prospectus

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents Ben Kinmont: Prospectus, an exhibition of projects by the artist that explore the boundaries between artistic work and everyday life, on view from September 1, 2012, through May 2013.

Somewhere between Conceptual art and "social sculpture," the work of Ben Kinmont (born 1963, Vermont) is based in real-time exchanges like meals, conversations, and gestures. It also takes form in the materials that document their action: broadsides, sketches, photographs, contracts, transcripts, and correspondence. Often Kinmont invites others to repeat his projects, with or without his participation. In this way the material presented in Ben Kinmont: Prospectus also operates as an open invitation for reactivation.

"Ben Kinmont's work constantly evolves with input from a wide range of artists and contributors, like a contemporary open-source platform," says Frank Smigiel, SFMOMA associate curator of public programs. In advance of this exhibition students in social practice at California College of the Arts conducted a set of interviews to reactivate one of the works on view, for example, and local high school students will take part in another reactivation as part of SFMOMA's Open Studio, bringing artist-designed activities into the classroom.

The ephemera and archival material in the exhibition relates to three of Kinmont's projects, selected specifically for the SFMOMA presentation. On becoming something else deals with artists whose practices have led them from the art world out into other activities and professions. Moveable type no documenta considers the possibility of moving from the world at large into the art world, asking if we can transfer meaning from our everyday lives into something we might also understand as art. Promised relations examines artists' contracts and the ways these documents record and manage the circulation of conceptual and social projects like Kinmont's, both within artistic circles and beyond.

The exhibition was organized by Smigiel with independent curator Christina Linden. Prospectus is the continuation of a travelling survey initiated by Kunstverein, Amsterdam, with additional exhibitions at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, and Fales Library at New York University, New York. As part of Prospectus: San Francisco, additional projects by Kinmont are also on view from September 5 through October 5, 2012 at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco. The exhibition will be on display at SFMOMA in the Koret Visitor Education Center, and the full archives will be available for viewing and handling by appointment in the SFMOMA Library and Archives. Three open sessions will make these materials available to SFMOMA visitors on Free Tuesdays: October 2, November 6, and December 4.

------

Field Conditions

organized by Joseph Becker

From September 1, 2012, through January 6, 2013, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents an exhibition that bends and blurs the boundaries between conceptual art and theoretical architecture, using the notion of the "field" to frame an investigation into the construction, representation, and experience of space. Field Conditions aggregates nearly 30 works in various media by both contemporary artists and practicing architects, including Tauba Auerbach, Daniel Libeskind, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sol LeWitt, and Lebbeus Woods, among others.

Curated by Joseph Becker, assistant curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA, Field Conditions demonstrates the inventive and interdisciplinary thinking that is a hallmark of SFMOMA's architecture and design collection. Becker describes the projects in the exhibition as "spatial experiments"—regardless of whether their makers define themselves as architects or visual artists, "all use a kind of architectural language to describe or provoke a spatial condition."

The exhibition takes its title from a landmark essay by architect Stan Allen. First published in 1996, Allen's "Field Conditions" marked a move away from traditional concepts of architectural form and toward a consideration of systems and networks. The show draws upon Allen's ideas in focusing on works that redefine the relationships between figure and ground, object and process, finite and infinite, place and nonplace. Here, the term "field" refers to an array of objects or marks that accumulate to the point of becoming a kind of system.

In a number of the works in Field Conditions, this cumulative or serial process takes the form of drawing. While a drawing by Allen himself—a vast array of algorithmically generated floor plans—has a practical yet abstract architectural application, the projects in the exhibition principally demonstrate ways of inscribing or describing space without the apparatus of a building. Daniel Libeskind's Micromegas (1978), made early in the celebrated architect's career and now in the SFMOMA collection, is a conceptual cornerstone of the exhibition, with its early and radical stance to the language of architecture. This deconstructionist approach opened new exploratory avenues for later architects and artists such as Lebbeus Woods, whose large-scale, immersive Conflict Space drawings (2006) will also be on view.

Many of the works in Field Conditions seem to defy the idea of boundary and act as windows into a potentially larger expanse, provoking viewers to imagine beyond the frame. In Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #45 (1970), a significant instance of art as plan or system rather than object, the size of the artwork is determined by the dimensions of the wall. The work emphasizes the arbitrariness of the edge, suggesting that the drawing could extend infinitely beyond the surface it marks.

Similarly, Tauba Auerbach's 50/50 Floor (2008) suggests a rectangle cut out of an infinite expanse. Covering the gallery floor with a grid randomly composed of 50 percent black and 50 percent white, the piece creates a walk-in field, one of a limitless number of possible configurations. Complementing 50/50 Floor is Auerbach's Static 6 (2008), a photograph of TV "snow." This representation of ambient electromagnetic waves visualizes the invisible, a process also suggested in 20Hz (2011), a video work by U.K. duo Semiconductor based on signals detected in outer space.

Like 50/50 Floor, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Homographies (2006) brings the viewer inside a large-scale field. This interactive installation employs an overhead grid of fluorescent tubes programmed to rotate in response to visitors' movements. As the lights react to the changing spatial relationships between people in the gallery, they denote disruptions in the field, creating interference in a homogeneous space. Lozano-Hemmer will also be the subject of a solo exhibition at SFMOMA this fall.

Among the other works featured in the exhibition are a new, large-scale drawing by Marsha Cottrell; two of the Cluster Diagrams (2001) by Bay Area–based architect Thom Faulders; a series of recent drawings by Austrian artist Peter Jellitsch; and a two-channel iterative media work by Los Angeles artist C. E. B. Reas.

Field Conditions is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In-kind support is provided by Daltile.

Image: C.E.B. Reas, Process 7 (detail), 2010; multimedia; dimensions variable; Courtesy the artist; © C.E.B. Reas

Media Contacts
Christine Choi, 415.357.4177, cchoi@sfmoma.org
Robyn Wise, 415.357.4172, rwise@sfmoma.org
Peter Denny, 415.357.4170, pdenny@sfmoma.org

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94103
Museum hours: Open daily (except Wednesdays): 11 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.; open late Thursdays, until 8:45 p.m. Summer hours (Memorial Day to Labor Day): Open at 10 a.m. Closed Wednesdays
Admission prices: adults: $18; seniors: $13; students: $11; SFMOMA members and children 12 and under: free.
Admission is free the first Tuesday of each month and half-price on Thursdays after 6 p.m.

stampa

permanent link