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Fraternal twins Alan and Michael Fleming have been living together since childhood, and collaborating in their shared space since 2005. That is, until Alan moved from Chicago to New York. With time apart, their dynamic evolved. “This exhibition marks a temporary hiatus in our collaboration. Not that we stopped making work, but that after many years of collaborating, we were suddenly forced to make our work in a new way since we were now living in two different cities,” says Michael. |
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Alan and Michael Fleming, Rock Paper Scissors, 2011. Courtesy of the artists.
Fraternal twins Alan and Michael Fleming have been living together since childhood, and collaborating in their shared space since 2005. That is, until Alan moved from Chicago to New York. With time apart, their dynamic evolved. “This exhibition marks a temporary hiatus in our collaboration. Not that we stopped making work, but that after many years of collaborating, we were suddenly forced to make our work in a new way since we were now living in two different cities,” says Michael.
For “GAME ON,” the Fleming brothers created two distinct bodies of work: one from the year they were separate, and the other from after they reunited. Their collaborations take various forms, including performance, video, drawing, and sculpture. “We are both interested in the shift toward sculpture in our practice, but we wanted to maintain the physicality of our prior performance and video work. I think we achieved that through certain pieces in the show like Rock Paper Scissors (2012),” says Alan. No matter the form, play and physicality are deeply involved, and their surroundings are treated as locations for experimentation, escape, and play.
We’re all aware of the myth of twins possessing a psychic connection that surpasses sibling intuition. The Fleming dizygotes aren’t necessarily drinking the Kool-Aid, but they do play around with the idea of twin ESP to try to get a sense of what their collaboration means in both situations, together and apart.
While separated, the two attempted to continue their collaborative art-making through objects such as postcards and Polaroids, calendars and clairvoyance games. These served as records of communication, and provided fodder for “GAME ON.” They even mailed an empty box back and forth, titled A Sea Shanty, which accumulated postage like barnacles over the year. Rock Paper Scissors (2011) took form as hand sculptures embodying three games Alan and Michael played in which neither knew the result until they installed the Chicago iteration of “GAME ON.” In an interview for Threewalls Gallery, Michael explains why they chose to portray Rock, Paper, Scissors. “We were really interested in this idea of a really ephemeral game that we would play when we were younger that was kind of a low-stakes game. But, that if we stretch it out over time and distance, and we embody it in this classical medium, it becomes something larger than itself, or something larger than a game between us. It becomes this metaphorical, conceptual object.” For Psychic Color Calendars (2011), they tried to focus on the same color every day for thirty days, and recorded the results on the calendars. These exercises and games were a way to stay connected despite the separate studios and thinking environments, and reflect an effort at examining each side of communication, its antecedents, pauses, and erasures. French sociologist Roger Caillois believed games must contain the following traits: fun, separate, uncertain, non-productive, governed by rules, and accompanied by the awareness of a different reality. Though the Flemings’ play does not adhere to all of these, it is interesting to note that many of these qualities are key elements in their games as well as in their collaborations.
Alan and Michael Fleming, Psychic Color Calendars, 2011. Courtesy of the artists.
In the second body of work, the Flemings examined the mechanics of a mental reunion and resumed play. One of the pieces, Who’s Bad? (2012), is a single-channel video of Alan teaching Michael to dance. Alan has years of training in hip-hop, break dance and other styles. The backdrop is the Brooklyn subway stop Hoyt Schermerhorn, where Martin Scorsese filmed Michael Jackson’s music video, “Bad.” According to critics, the video helped MJ’s image become edgier, and the video has over 53 million views on youtube. Alan describes how they decided to create a rawer, unrehearsed video. “After I had been teaching Mike the moves, we were becoming precise, performing the whole combination. But when we started to look at the footage, we were struck by the moment of learning. So, I told Mike, ‘Don’t learn any choreography before you get to the subway.’ The only times he would learn were in front of the camera. So, I would introduce new material to him, explain it, and he would have to learn it on the spot, on site, with people looking.” As a result, the unedited video shows a learning experience rather than a final product.
The Fleming brothers received their MFA from the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which they attended as a collaborative. This is the second iteration of GAME ON—the first took place in Chicago—and the brothers’ first solo exhibition in New York. The two are currently based out of Brooklyn.
Alan and Michael Fleming have shown their collaborative works throughout the US as well as abroad. Their videos have been screened in Copenhagen, Lviv, Ukraine, Rio de Janeiro, and Berlin. They are current fellows in the AIM (Artist in the Marketplace) Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and International Artists in Residence at the NARS (New York Art Residency & Studio) Foundation. They have performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, and the Factory for Art and Design in Copenhagen.
