Extreme Curations?

 Extreme Curations?


It struck me while reading that the authors of these curatorial texts each hit upon the idea of the show as more than just the way in which art is exhibited—instead, the show itself is carefully crafted, its lines of questioning and theorizations carefully teased out. The art supports the ideas of the exhibition maker’s show. I’ll admit that I hadn’t before been able to pinpoint this shift away from the objects as the site of discourse to the collection and display of objects (or documentation, or tables and chairs implying that a conversation occurred, whatever the exhibition is about) as the site of discourse. That is, the productive, art-producing conversation as a product of the exhibition, and therefore of the institution, rather than the initial, tangible art.

After going to the New York Colloquium last winter, and seeing so many shows in such a short amount of time, I’ve had some lingering questions regarding exhibition making, and when and where it’s really effective. The show I keep going back to is the Chris Burden retrospective at the New Museum (Chris Burden: Extreme Measures). I was told, upon purchasing my ticket, to start at the top floor and work my way down. Fine. But in being led to the top, I was immediately drawn into the museum’s other exhibition—it was as though the institution wanted me to start there, just to make sure I didn’t ignore Performance Archiving Performance altogether in favor of the (admittedly) more exciting giant miniature mech-war happening down on the second floor. Perhaps more importantly, only a glass door separated Performance Archiving Performance from an entire floor of Chris Burden’s performance pieces. In looking through PAP, I was presented with the usual smattering of documentations and institutional commentary about it.

Stepping out into the Chris Burden show was like a cold breeze in July.

The exhibition maker had done something which I hadn’t really seen before, but had made all of the difference. Rather than either putting up a sign next to the work, or giving me a pamphlet with information that I would then be unable to ever completely ignore, they placed the signs at a distance from the work, in places where you could not read them and see the work at the same time, so the two experiences had to be a separate moment. The most radical element though was that each of the signs was actually written by Chris Burden, at the time each piece was completed. It seemed revolutionary that the artist would actually be given the space to talk about his work, even in such a highly curated exhibit. In fact, as I worked my way through the exhibit, listening to video compilations of Burden speak, reading through thick binders documenting his performances, the strength of his voice was what left the clearest impression on me.

For me, what made that exhibit such a success was the exhibition maker’s acknowledgment of the work outside of the institution’s desire to narrate it. Instead, the exhibition maker used the architecture of the building as a way of organizing, sometimes embellishing, and almost always illuminating Burden’s work from across four decades. 

Installation view of Chris Burden: Extreme Measures courtesy of New Museum.