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The Best Way To Do Art - John Baldessari
A young artist in art school used to worship the paintings of Cezanne.
He looked and studied all the books he could find on Cezanne and copied all of the reproductions of Cezanne’s work he found in the books.
He visited a museum and for the first time saw a real Cezanne painting. He hated it.
It was nothing like the Cezanne’s he had studied in the books. From that time on, he made all of this paintings the sizes of paintings reproduced in books and he painted them in black and white.
He also printed captions and explanations on the paintings as in books. Often he just used words.
And one day he realized that very few people went to art galleries and museums but many people looked at books and magazines as he did and they got them through the mail as he did.
Moral: It’s difficult to put a painting in a mailbox.
The above story written by John Baldessari in his 1971 exhibition Ingres and Other Parables was cataloged by Lucy Lippard in her reference book “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972”. His quote manifests for Lippard what she claimed was leading to the “process of dematerializing the object – easily mailed work, catalogues and magazine pieces, primarily art that can be shown inexpensively and unobtrusively in infinite locations at one time”. This dematerialization of the art object branched from evolutions in reproduction first observed by Walter Benjamin in the early 20th century, and later interpreted by John Berger who wrote that “the meaning of the original work no longer lies in what it uniquely says but in what it uniquely is”. The “original” art work was again confronted in Eleanor Heartney’s Postmodernism when she said of photography “any number of equally distinct prints can be made form a single photographic negative, [and] there is no ‘original,’ a condition that meshes perfectly with the postmodern negation of uniqueness and originality”. As the Internet has increasingly become a source for not only the exhibition of art but also the transfer of artworks so has ideas of dematerialization and issues of originality in artwork come into question again. Now artworks can be created on a computer and sent to multiple participants simultaneously while also exhibited online. Images, 3D models, and videos can all be reproduced ad infinitum and exhibited endlessly. The Photoshop .psd file is now the binary model that Baudrillard credits as the third level of simulacrum, our contemporary paradigm for simulation. For my exhibition I would like to present to viewers artworks that can be interminably downloaded and displayed concomitantly in several areas. Berlin based artist collective AIDS-3D will present a framed print titled Berserker, a computer generated portrait of an alien, which will be accompanied with a flash drive containing a file for the actual print. New York artist Ben Schumacher will showcase seven 3D models of iPhones all found off of Google’s 3D Warehouse and displayed on IKEA shelves. Artist Victor Vaughn, from Baltimore, will present a series of prints detailing his family’s history of internationally outsourcing for horse breeding. All of these works at the PPOW will be available for free download off the Internet for public access and simultaneously all pieces will be exhibited at REFERENCE Art Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. All works address concurrent issues of originality, distance, and reproduction – a theme attended to with the actual exhibition itself. As Marshall McLuhan said: “the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind”. If the medium is the message, than these pieces are catalysts for the ultra-information age, or the pieces of “meat” that stand as archetypes of a new era.
AIDS 3D
BIO
After meeting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Keller and Kosmas moved to Berlin and started their collaboration in 2006. Their diverse multimedia practice employs the language of American PR to critically examine the history and future of technoscientific development, satirizing the hyperbolic claims of proponents of transcendental technology and their critics alike.
WORK STATEMENT
Berserker
(Materials Variable)
A Von Neumann probe arrives on an alien world from earth with a single message —Reproduce me. It appears to be some sort of idol. Its image is its form, Its word is its flesh, its seed is information on a solid-state universal serial bus memory stick, It's essence encoded in binary. Is it an emissary of peace or a mindless virus programmed to dominate its surroundings?
We invite people to download and re-execute the Berserker in whatever media they choose, so long as it also contains the "berserker.obj" file within the work.
BEN SCHUMACHER
BIO
Born 1985, Kitchener, Ontario and works in New York City, New York
Ben Schumacher's sculptural configurations bring together constructed objects, and web content that has undergone various modes of transformation in order for information to exist as real world objects. Models of ipods, models of sculptures, models of garments, models of drawings of nude models and vases; in each of these cases, one is presented a portal in-between a “real” thing in the world and the creative representation of that thing. These various elements together create tableaus that allude to specificities of time and place in relation to the systems of distribution that art and it's photo documented form circulate within. The formal elements of the arrangements approach a new reality that exists online, a layered reality that augments our physical selves and our perceptual possibilities. While these arrangements exist as objects, they are completed and complemented by documentation(jpegs) that are manipulated with elements such as watermarking that hint at their availability for transmission, dissemination, and manipulation. Aside from the disappointing online experience an interesting spirit starts to develop around the work: the true work becomes neither the ‘really’ existing object nor its REpresentation but the third ‘virtual’ work that is composed of dialectical mediation of the two.
WORK STATEMENT
13of 579 iPhones
3D printed .stl files collected from Google 3d warehouse users, Rapid Prototyping, Ikea table
2009
If the role of the collector is to corral authentic and rare objects in order to summon cultural and historical meaning embedded within the objects, how will the collector begin to assemble and sift in a world where objects exist as digital files that can not only be printed by anyone but can also be revised and altered by anyone. The Notions of seriality and edition are challenged when a designed object can be produced ad infinitum, and even more so when the mode of production becomes domesticated(when the site of conception overlaps with the site of production). A digital model produced and printed in 2009 can have the exact same form as the same file printed in 2050, however, the physical objects themselves may differ in their material qualities and precision due to constantly updated printing technologies. The same file printed at two different times bears two physical variants of the same information file, the dialectical mediation between the 1 and 2 reveal a narrative of the progression of technology and changing modes of production. The same digital model takes on a palimpsest of readings as it is continually recalled into objective existence through new modes of production, the newest print reshuffles and virtually alters the conception of the original file in relation to the summation of it's output.
VICTOR VAUGHN
BIO
(b. Baltimore, Maryland), Lives and works in Baltimore
WORK STATEMENT
Horse & Handler
Prints, dimensions vary,
2009
Since the publication of Jim Crump, Jr's 1988 article "STALLION EJACULATION INDUCED BY MANUAL STIMULATION OF THE PENIS", the methods to facilitate the exportation of frozen semen have become even more removed and convoluted. The widespread use of “phantom” mares, artificial vaginas and other bait and switch techniques, throughout the Equine husbandry industry, has further obfuscated any direct line from animal to animal. Whether it is brokering artificial insemination over expansive gap of the Atlantic Ocean, or the anonymous release of a glory hole, I am interested in the psychological effect of mediated sexual relationships on both the horse and its handlers. My contribution to the show is comprised of mixed media pieces that have been scanned and converted to jpg. Each image is part of a the larger narrative pairing my own love life with the love life an American Trakehner being bred to German mares. The formal challenges that arise from presenting a series of connected images is for me just as engaging as the content said images are employed to deliver. In fact, I believe the two functions are inseparably interlaced. The amalgamating ability to see two related objects as instances of a single category facilitates the narrative of continuity in a normal consciousness. By puncturing this automatic and comforting meniscus, if only by momentarily shifting the lens, the work can bring the viewer into some greater engagement with these fraudulent systems that operate as a binding mortar. The limited devices become transparent theatrical foil in a meta-fictional exercise, linear progression of events that speed up and revert on its self, shaking the stability of a uni-vocal prose.