DEAR NADIA
The End of the ‘Bring Your
Own Beer’ Art Space
DEAR NADIA: With Temple Bar
Gallery ‘shuttered up’ for June,
Monster Truck Gallery had a
real chance to make a strong
curatorial statement in their first
‘real’ show at their new space
neighboring TBG&S. But NADIA,
I say this with al l the future
blessings for Monster Truck at their
new location, the current show
practiced too much of the ‘synergy’
that the press release proclaimed;
forcing the 3 artists showing, into a
limp, formalist tug of war.
BLESSINGS
★ Maurizo Cattelan, Massimiliano
DEAR BLESSINGS: As a prelude
to a rant, I want to reflect on a
show that combined a successful
curatorial statement with formalist
underpinning. Curators, Adrian
Searle and Greg Hilty’s ‘Unbound:
Possibilities in Painting,’ at the
Hayward Gallery, London, 1994,
was the precursor for a decade of
painting ‘play’ meets DIY
installation. The inclusion of Jessica
S t o c k h o l d e r, t h e Q u e e n o f
expansive painting and multi-
coloured rubbish piles, served to
i n v i te t h e ‘ Pa i n t i n g i s D e a d ’
discourse at the time, rather than
highlight the importance of the
medium to contemporary art, that
the title suggested. Was Stock-
holder’s work really painting, or was
it the ‘object’ that the ‘death of
painting’ discourse needed on its
front cover?
It is also important to mention
that ‘Unbound’ was Pre-Relational
Aesthetics. The social insistence of
Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideal for Art
versus the formalist indulgences of
painting in Searle and Hilty’s
curatorial, proved at the time that
both avenues were perfectly valid.
In a way, the question is not which
one does the artist favour, but how
the social feeds the formal and vice
versa.
Monster Truck are an easy target,
but their group show, Spooky Action,
has the tone of establishment; of
wanting to be with the ‘Big Boys.’ I
had flashbacks to the backstreets of
Venice, where, en route to the
G i a ra d i n i a n d Ar s e n a l e, s m a l l
commercial art galleries tried to
persuade the Biennale audience
whose goal is an oxymoran: to subvert
with their polished, colourfully ‘conceptual,’ ‘For Sale’
trinkets; more gift-shop than food for thought.
At Monster Truck’s new space in Temple Bar, there
seems to be no Raison d'être for the space, or the artists
so far involved. Mother’s tankstation proclaims in its
gallery statement that ‘mother’ should not be read as
the literal mother, but the young hubris at monster
truck could benifit from looking at the wise direction
at mother’s tankstation; style and substance go hand in
hand at the gallery.
The artist and writer David Batchelor, who’s work
blatantly exploits the art world’s fear of colour, filled a
whole book on the disease he diagnosed as
Chromophobia. Without the thought provoking theory
that surrounds Batchelor’s practice, his high-coloured
lightboxes and readymades, would act as just another
art world exploit of the formally kitsch kind.
This aside brings me to the 3 artists on show at
monster truck, Helen Hughes, Barbara Knezevic and
Vanessa Donoso Lopez, have, I assume, been put
together for no other reason than the act of filling
space. ‘Precarious,’ the term Hal Foster coined recently
for the art of the last decade is here, but in a stale form.
The reliance on form to produce metaphorical content
is jaded. That is why the previously mentioned
Stockholder came to mind while viewing the colourful
assemblages and balancing acts at the gallery. But while
Stockholder’s work succeeded in generating an impetus
for more expansive thinking concerning formalist
intrusions in space, this show reiterates the overly
formalist crutch that artists use to avoid anything
bordering on the conceptual. Monster Truck - Temple
Bar, in this display, looks like a showroom for their
‘looser’ brand of art at Francis Street. You also have to
ask the question, how does Monster Truck survive in
Temple Bar, without a degree of commercialisation?
With location comes gravitas, but this is not always the
case for art institutions, TBG&S is an example of good
Part 3., August 2010.
programming and fiscal sense, not
going hand in hand.
As a so-called ‘antibody against
the “blue-chip syndrome” that was
af f e c t i n g t h e [ Ne w Yo r k ] a r t
community,’ the Wrong Gallery,
(Pictured), existed for 3 years
(2002-2005), as a modest, one
square foot of exhibition space. This
year’s lead curator of the Whitney
Biennale, NY, Francesco Bonami,
wrote: The philosophy of the Wrong
Ga#ery dramatica#y reflects that of an
entire generation of artists and curators
t h o u g h t c o n s e n s u s. Fo u n d e d b y
Gioni and Ali Subotnick, the Wrong
Galler y exhibited work that
challenged our consumption of art.
Rather than the art object giving a
‘key’ to potential narrativity, unseen,
word of mouth mythologies offered
juicy political gossip. Rumour or
fact, one commentator in the know
writes: Pawel Althamer hired two
Polish i#egal immigrants to smash in the
door [of the Wrong Gallery] with a
baseba# bat every Saturday. This in-
ventive inter vention, flips the
purpose of art, from one of being
housed in a space, to a process that
has an exterior cause and effect; a
discourse on the gallery and the
social function of art is hit with one
baseball bat.
Ironically, what can only be
described as a negative ‘switcheroo’
effect - in relation to Monster
Truck’s repositioning - the Kevin
Kavanagh Gallery uproot from the
City Centre in September 2008, to
what ‘gossip’ has described as too
far, and too much floor polish, at
Chancery Lane, Dublin 8, is further
reason for a much needed critical
appraisal of the mentality that
drives production value and square
meterage above the social or con-
ceptual reason for art to exist.The
current show, Regarding Painting,
lacks any rhyme or reason. OK,
there is a big difference between
curatorial ambition at an artist-run
space, versus commercial gallery
efforts at pseudo-curatorial exh-
ibitions; with in-house artists and a
few off-side stragglers as a side dish.
But, why don’t we take a bat to all
this mediocrity, that is the ongoing
prevalent theme of Dublin City’s
current art malaise, and grow some
balls? PDF: http://dearnadia.wordpress.com
Contact: nadiaplease@gmail.com