EXTRA OPEN: A conversation with Charlotta Kotik, Dread Scott, and Bill Scan
By Horace Bockington
arbitrary lines between insider and outsider, between emerging artists and "art stars", but more importantly conceptual and political based art, formalism and narration. The exhibition brings into the museum context an approach that distinguishes it from the recent Whitney Biennial, in that it aims to be inclusive rather than instructive or trend- setting. Open House can’t be easily simplified; it is a delightful jumble of conflicting interest of representation and abstraction between public and private meaning, between the external and internal. For this reason the exhibition requires the viewer to work, and by extension really engage with the art. The curators Charlotta Kotik and Tumelo Mosaka put a lot of work into dis-framing the exhibition, such that it appears at times rather open ended, without any essential direction. However, that is the very intention of the curatorial exercise. Looking at numerous slides, conducting open calls for submission, and countless studio visits, the curators realized an exhibition that best summarizes the present state of art making, not simply in Brooklyn, but in New York. If the Whitney’s curators aimed for a pseudo national/00international sensibility, Open House achieve a more directed local diversity, that capture the pulse and range of wonderfully chaotic frenzy of New York art at the moment.
While many reviewers have approached the exhibition looking for an absolute, they fail to miss the very temperament that is in New York, of which this exhibition speaks. Like the city itself, the art in New York now is in a state in flux, that being the case, any definition of local art is open ended and all encompassing. We are no longer in the age of heralding the new, but rather embracing the possibility of the diversity, and ability for divergent artistic interest, and creative nuisance to co-exist. If there is anything this exhibition affirms it is that Manhattan may have its art centers, but the artists’ creative energy is all over the city, including Brooklyn.
The exhibition is larger than the simplified notion of a Brooklyn aesthetic, the diversity of the artists; their contextual and aesthetic interests ensure that such a limitation is not possible. The exhibition-selected artists are expected and inviting. But while many of the more established artists provide a point of entry into the exhibition, it is the works of the less known or under-exhibited artists whose works make this exhibition vital. Limited focus ventures such as biennials often get lost on the reaffirming art stars, or on the heralding the new. This is not the intent of this exhibition. Rather, what is presented within the scope of the exhibitions is an opportunity to see talent, perhaps in the developing stage, alongside with sometimes seminal works from more mature artist. It is this range in quality that makes this exhibition exciting.
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Kotik and Mosaka have thus taken what can be described as curatorial " blank " canvas approach to the exhibition. It a sense it more like a international exhibition on the level of a " good" documenta or manifesta, in which the opportunity to see the new and emerging artist are presented side by side with accomplish works by both mid-career, and important established talents. For this viewer the true highlights of this exhibition, came from seeing works by emerging " young" artists, and works by artists that have been quietly working away from the public in recent years brilliantly balance by new works by the well recognized and established names in the exhibition. Noteworthy therefore are works by Satch Hoyt, Emily Jacir, Dave McKenzie, Wangechi Mutu, Susan Rabinowitz, Dread Scott, Bill Scanga, Fatimah Tuggar, Kristen Hassenfeld, Anthony Goicolea, Chris Doyle, Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua, Kathleen Burkhart, Heide Cody , Luis Gispert, William Villalongo and Amy Cutler. The works of this group richly compliment the proven richness of works by Matthew McCaslin, Roxy Paine, Paul Henry Ramirez, Collier Schorr, David Shaprio, Amy Sillman, Lorna Simpson, Vito Acconci, Terry Adkins, Stephen Dean, Ricci Albenda, Bryon Kim, Kenseth Armstead, Nadine Robinson, E.V. Day, Leonardo Drew, Martha Rosler, and Sol’Sax (providing what has to be the longest title for a work in the exhibition), and the always intriguing Louise Bourgeois.
It perhaps the expanding the aesthetic and critical perimeters of the curatorial
enterprise and the possibilities of noting wish to be so definitive that makes
Open House an interesting exhibition. In a conversation with both curators, it is
apparent however that they had not completely forsaken their own curatorial
interest. While the exhibition selections are often at times contradictory, there
remains an underlining emphasis in the exhibition on what appear currents
events, and the global political state of the world, equally how individual position
and navigate themselves in a nomadic changing world context. Equally, the
curators have identified the several basis themes that run throughout the
exhibition, "Fable","The Quest for Identity", "Domesticity", "Digital Metamorphosis",
" Structured Environment", and "Nature and Landscape". Underlining contexts
and social commentary operates immediately beneath the surface of many of
the works. However, this subtext is never preaching, or wrapped in
heavily indigestible critical theories as many recent exhibitions have done. The
political context here is clear, as to paraphrase a statement one of the
curators makes in the catalogue, it’s about the political nature our awareness in a
contemporary world in which we often experience our realities as fragmentation
or own predicaments in the context of some type of Diaspora.
Brooklyn is not a hobbit, its is part of a vital arena of older and younger artist working side by side, often bouncing off each others. It produces no definitive metaphors or signifiers of what art constitutes " Brooklyn" art, rather similar to the approach Kotik and Mosaka has taken in their exhibition approach, collectively the art coming out of Brooklyn remains opened, unlimited by canons, or frame. Open House speaks to both the autobiographical natures of the individual artists, as well as their particular aesthetic interests. By its nature it remains extra open.
Recently, I arranged for a meeting with Kotik, Mosaka, and two artists included in the exhibition. I intentionally selected artists whose works spoke to two different sensibilities in the exhibition. Dread Scott, whose works has often times been loaded with charged political content, and Bill Scanga, whose conceptual installations are often subversive statement of the nature of the museum itself. Scott’s work although continuing his treatment of relevant social and political themes never falls into the formulaic brow beating of the highly text driven or critical theorizing that categories of lot of recent bad "political art". There equally seems to be a new confidence in the work, a fresh attempt to fuse context and content, while strengthening his use of the means. Bill Scanga’s art in aims to subvert what he refers to as the " white box" so identified with modernist museum and contemporary art. However his work is not nostalgic, what his work talks to is the promise of the institution; it intended mission, and what it has become. Conceptually, he wants to re-conceptualize the experience of viewing, raising all type of questions, about vision perceptual. His approach however removed from the aster 70s conceptual frame, by his introduction of delightful sense of whimsy into this didactic.
What follow are summaries of this conversation with the four participants, as we walk through the exhibition:
Kotik: (Before entering the exhibition and stopping at a work installed at part of the permanent collection by Asher B. Durand, " The First Harvest in the Wilderness") This is one of the earliest works collected by the Museum. It’s both an expressions of American and Hudson River School. It important because it talks to how they viewed Nature.
Scanga: (Whose work in the Open House is conceptual re-creation of both the Durand painting and the museum setting of the work). American nature is very beautiful
Scott: Yeah, it not quite plain. It talks to another older reality of America
Kotik: Landscape really
Scanga: Yeah, but is also points to modern times, relationships, modern biology artists as naturalist, undefined. The painting is like the museum, everything jumbled about.
Scott: Illustrating a certain moment. But it also makes up reflect on the destruction of the American landscape, sort of taken for granted
Scanga: How it has been. But it also about the promise of the what America was suppose to become…The relationship with the new America and its landscape
Kotik: It’s like a walk through American landscape. In a way it’s about personal relationship
Scott: In a way that’s how t I approach my work, I want to talk about relationships, about the moment…people living through position of negative. I’m looking at the world I see. manifestations.
Moving into the exhibition the curators reflect on their general issues of the exhibition, while the two artists talk specifically about their work, and the exhibition in general.
Kotik: I think we are living in a period in which we are faced with hard questions. The presence is really about being let down…n falling myths. Artists are therefore often talking about being total upset about situations.
Scanga: People fought and died for justice. America is presently brutally divided. I have always had hope for America, and I think the people are really upset about what’s going on.
Kotik: But losing hope is also a possibility
Scott: I think we are all going through a period… I make art about it. My wife and I did a piece about detention in Manhattan Women Center. We finished it in March. It a video installation… The audio component contains the voice of our son saying the American Pledge of Alliance.
Stopping at Bill Scanga’s installation: "Asher B Durand, The First Harvest in the Wilderness, 1855" an installation consisting of miniature recreation of the Durand’s painting, and the artist conceptual recreation of the gallery’s walls and floor are combined with true-to- scale size taxidermy pigeons.
Scanga: I’m interested in how the painting look then and now…. I’m rather hopeful. I’m constantly intrigued by millions of things…change in scale, natural history diorama, changing relationships. My works talks to how we look at things… how they are presented to us. In approaching Durand’s work, I’m addressing how things are presented, the floor, the walls, and the very nature of its installation as part of the American collection. My interested in the work has a little bit of humor. The penguins have an almost doll house affect, I’m equally thinking about people who collect things, such as miniatures. I reflect back on the past when the art use to be hung in this rather majestic living rooms and the type of people who originated started to collect art in America. In a sense I ‘m using the gallery as a type of lab.
Kotik: I think about people who collect miniature or stuff dolls, and ceramic face jars, and other memorabilia. I really like that stuff. They represent very emotional collections. They speak to how people respond to that work…Warhol collected it, so did Patrick Kelly whose exhibition is downstairs. I think we are all somewhat attracted to those objects, but we hate to admit it.
Scanga: I think we contextualize, for example I include the penguins in the work, and reflect that the penguins has sort of becomes associated with New York and Brooklyn… yet the bird is not indigenous to the region at all.
Scott: The experience of nature and the museum experience are rather similar.
Scanga: I’m equally interested in modern design. My work talks simultaneously the notion of creating conceptual work, and how it is presented, but the institution of the museum itself. Scale is very important, I am obviously limited here by the location of the work, but it could have equally been a full gallery type of installation as well. But I thinks this location works well, it gives the work a unique juxtaposition to the surrounding works by other artists in terms of it sheer placement.
Scott: Yeah, the juxtapositions of works in this exhibition are often not normally what you would expect, and are intriguing here. For example my political driven work is placed opposite some rather formalist type of works…. And it sort makes my statements a little more emphatic.
We move on to Dread Scott (Untitled) installation, consisting of framed two gelatin silverprints depicting youth photographed in a detention center. The installation has an audio component, which consist of taped interviews of the youth describing their experience in jail. The voices on the soundtracks are not necessary those of the individual depicted, but have been randomly mixed from a series of interviewed conducted by the artist. This abbreviated installation is part of a larger work, which consist of ten additional framed images of similar youth detainee. Scott, had talked to me early about the significant of the work in the context of number of youth presently being held in jails throughout the America, often for false of minor charges. Listening very carefully and you hear the youth describing harsh treatment by the prison’s guards, and at the hands of other inmates.
Scott: The work has it own specificity. It talks about the present state of American prison… but also about the "incarceration" of almost an entire generation. Ironically, given what’s happening in Iraq and the treatment of the prisoners it now has wider implications…. You often find yourself thinking hey, this is American…Often I tell people my works are not meant to be pessimistic, cause I have a great hope in humanity… Yeah, I do think a lot of work by the end of the 90s had created a type of political art ghetto. It became cool to do the opposite. However, my work is meant to be reflective. Looking at the world gives my art strength
Scanga: I think it gets enhanced
Scott: The work is opposed against mere formalist notions. I trying to create more provocative debate, but that don’t mean all art has to be socially engaged… I like Richard Serra
Kotik: We were very conscious since Brooklyn have such diversity to include artists whose worked conceptually, but also those who looked at the world politically. We never intended on having themes, we had decided that from the onset, but then things happen, helping to structure the works in the exhibition.
The exhibition is really about complexity no one element dominates.
Scott: The exhibition actually has a lot of connections. Bill’s work talks about aesthetics, my work is about the world we live in, if George Bush was painter.
Kotik: We didn’t organize this exhibition with the idea of highlighting the who’s hot, no did we fell the need to validate the artists. The show is about Brooklyn, that the context. More artists live here than any other borough. The audience is Brooklyn…. This exhibition aims in some ways to make comment on the situation in the world now. It much different from the Whitney. The exhibition is partially about looking at things in context
Scott: I think we live in a period of profound polarization. There is no New York School… I creating more directly engaged work. That is quite different from Scanga, but that doesn’t mean I can’t reconcile or relate to his work
Scanga: I’m don’t create work with a sense of category. I think once you do that you begin fighting yourself.
Kotik: As I noted in the category the works in the exhibition have a type of Synergy and talk to a psychological space on the part of the artists that is about freedom, artistic and emotional, .The works are less pessimistic than perhaps works by some of the artists contemporaries in other parts of America and perhaps Europe… There is something particular about Brooklyn, I think that why artists in the late 70s started to move here. I think they found more of a mental space that could be achieved in Manhattan.
Scott: Although it not apparent in y work, I feel more connected to Brooklyn then say 42nd street.
Scanga: I kind of the artistic social structure of Brooklyn…there’s no center.
Kotik: I think the exhibition establishes connections about the work created here. …I think looking at the exhibition I was too democratic in the selection. But you know I would have loved to include even more artists.
Scanga: People have raised questions about the number of artists, suggesting that it might been better with less artists. But I kind of like the idea of being exhibited beside more established artists. It actually gives a lot of us a chance to be viewed, if you imagine a lot of viewers come for the "names". But I think the younger talent holds up very well here.
Kotik: I agreed, I find that certain reviewers have commented on the exhibition as being too inclusive and therefore rambling. BUT we purposively want the exhibition to be diverse. I think many of the critics of the exhibition are moving around with antiquated and convoluted concepts of what art should be. Instead embracing what art is now, namely diversity…. They want to hold true to something that is no longer valid. Therefore they can’t see this show.
Scott: Politically there a lot of good work in the show. There are some really good artists, but I think what great is that this show really talks about the moment, about now, in a complex rich way. The artists are not running away, Understanding that people are afraid, the artists confront the issues.
Kotik: I have confidence in the public, and I think they will embrace the exhibition. My problem is not with them, but with the gatekeepers: museums, critics. I want the viewer to think about what the work says, whether directly as in the case of Dread Scott, or more conceptually or metaphorically in Bill Scanga’s installation. I think both artists are saying art matters a lot. While some critics crush this type of open didactic approach to curating, people come to see the work, and get involved in the debate. I think there is some really strong works here that talk about painting and process. But there is also a lot of political work here that is very relevant… are largely acceptable…. And extremely good.
Scanga: I think its great that the public can come here and see good works that deal with important social issues, but can equally view my work that is a often has a type of subversive humor just underneath the surface.
Kotik: I think wanted to look at what New York art was about now, particularly artists working in Brooklyn but equally look at a deeper or perhaps a little more serious at what artists were preoccupied with at moment when the world is in an strange flux.
