Conceptual Framing

Recently I've been to two shows here in Santa Fe where the signs are better than the work itself. ...I am of course overstating things -- there are pieces in each show that, with a push, could stand on their own...

The first show, More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness at SITE Santa Fe, has room after room of stuff that needs explaining. Now, all Modern and Contemporary art (and maybe all art in general) needs a little background to appreciate it appropriately -- just look to Duchamp. However the stuff that sticks with me has a visceral component that is amplified by the explanation, not the other way around. My feeling about the SITE show is that they should have kept the signs and dispensed with the work.

This lack of grounding is the fundamental problem of Conceptual Art, and probably the reason that almost every artist described in the book Conceptual Art (Ursula Meyer, 1972) -- which has been an interesting re-read after all this time -- has returned to making objects again.

An exemplar is the giant-trailer-skeleton-in-the-dim-room piece (Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Phantom Truck, 2007). You have to work at figuring out what it is if you have the patience to let your eyes adjust to the gloom. Or you can read the sign to find that it is a model of the hypothesized Iraqi mobile chemical weapons factories that were never found. Bada-Bing! No trucks were necessary to the making of this realization!

Nor did we get a mention of Baudrillard's Simulacra in the lengthy windup.

The second show, Dust in the Machine at the Center for Contemporary Art, follows conceptual suit but at least has some intrinsically interesting pieces. Such old hat as nicely done architectural photographs and simple video projections play well. But the attempts to make a statement -- a tar-pot-trailer-devoid-of-that-new-tar-smell parked in the middle of the space (?!) -- need those lengthy signs, which are missing, to get.

Maybe it's just the use of trailers indoors that frustrates me? I dunno...

Anyway. Since Santa Fe is all about the Light I need to come up with a proposal for CCA to actually use those Munoz-Waxman Gallery windows. Every show I've seen there goes out of its way to prevent that wonderful illumination from permeating the space.