THE KRESGE PRIZE

December 9, 2008

ALMOST FAMOUS: a shortlist exhibition
Detroit's Kresge Prize Finalists Go Down for the Count

by Richard Krug for Art Times

DETROIT - The very first Kresge Prize exhibition looks like a dud. The six shortlisted artists on view at Detroit’s Museum of New Art (MONA) struck me as unusually similar. Normally such outings try to create some variety or change of pace if only because the exhibition that accompanies any prize is made livelier when there is a good mix of painting and sculpture as well as film, photography and installation art in it. That means that this first shortlist, titled Almost Famous, focuses on one kind of art-making in Detroit to the exclusion of all others. And that would be painting.

But are these even paintings?

An odd decision was made before the Kresge jurors even met: to make the work more palatable for this conservative art town, nearly all of this exhibit’s work has been digitally captured and transferred onto canvas, no matter what its original medium – all stretched, varnished and presented as rather traditional paintings.

An object reduced only to an art context – IS IT STILL ART?

By displaying all the entries as “art”, by exhibiting everything as “paintings”, the Detroit work is stripped of either the sensational or the difficult, and straight-jacketed from using arty gimmicks or hey look-at-me grandstanding. This forced gambit does uncomplicate the chaotic flux of contemporary art and trends, but at the same time casts an eerie quality over the entire exhibition.

ALMOST FAMOUS stands more like a crime scene recreation, with sketch artist renditions of the real thing. Mostly photography based, of mainly realistic scenes, deceptively nonchalant in composition and subject matter – but by way of its “pure” presentation is emptied of implicit meaning or edge. Harnessed to the most traditional medium of all, the exhibit has unintentionally freed itself to become art that no longer depends on the obscure reference to be understood.
What’s left you might ask.

Altogether, it creates the kind of contemporary art spectacle you don't usually get anymore: room after room of miscellaneous paintings, everything very cleanly shown, and with clear space around it. The display is unobtrusive, though not exactly rousing. The works appear like a succession of solid trophies, each one asking above all to be noticed.

DOWN FOR THE COUNT

These first contenders are not "trying to be sensationalists," Cesar Marzetti answered, as to whether he viewed this exhibit as Detroit’s own version of the notorious Sensation show that a decade ago thrust so many young British artists onto the world stage. "Detroit artists are just trying to deal with the issues of the 21st century."

Yet to put all the stress on a failed shortlist, as this show does, is strange. Although the main objective of the Kresge Prize isn't to foster talent through reward, the competitive aspect still becomes an enormous public lure. Obviously one the Museum of New Art could not resist to exploit by mounting this show.

TIGHT SECURITY

"Complete impartiality was the premium set for distinguishing the shortlist from the final winner,” one juror confided.

There will always be compromise voting and favoritism, but to best maintain the prize's impartiality against public scrutiny: jurors were required not to have viewed nor have any personal knowledge of the nominees' work over the past five years; nor, were they allowed to either speak with, interview or visit the artists nor their studios.

THE PRIZE FIGHT

According to Marzetti, "If the Kresge Prize simply becomes a star search for the safe, the old and the established - it will totally cripple its ability to be the benchmark that distinguishes Detroit artists. If it sets out to be Detroit's Nobel Prize for Art, all the top people will be used up in the first five years. It wildly overshoots, and the overwhelming majority of Detroit's best will be rendered ineligible."

When London's Turner Prize briefly dropped their shortlist exhibition in 1988, critics and public alike hated being deprived of the opportunity to compare works, to approve or disapprove of the selections, and the fun of trying to predict who would – or wouldn't – win. In 1991 the Turner shortlist, and exhibition of work by shortlisted artists, was reinstated.

In Detroit there are many who argue that a similar competition is the best way to attract widespread interest, but that the Kresge administrators are half-hearted about attracting media coverage. Such a competition would possibly achieve the impossible here: establishing a Detroit contemporary art event as something of national concern and importance.

Jef Bourgeau, director of the Museum of New Art, holds a slightly different view: "The whole idea of a race and a winner is demeaning to art. I also have particular concerns about the shortlist, since all but one would be seen as losers in a race they hadn't chosen to enter. There is also uncertainty at this early point as to what the Prize is actually for: is it to acknowledge the work of Detroit's most reputable senior artists? Or should it highlight younger but transformative talent? And if you have both types of artist on one shortlist, how do you possibly decide between them?"

Having said that, Bourgeau explained why he eventually agreed to this exhibition: "The shortlisted artists for this prize were told that they should feel honored just to be nominated. I see Almost Famous as giving the shortlisted some small acclamation for their commitment to Detroit and their contributions to its culture.

"And for the general public, such a laudable award should be more than a mere announcement. It should allow us all the occasion to see some of the best art being honored in Detroit. Detroiters need to come to know their artists, young and old, untried or true. And I firmly believe the Kresge Prize and its fellowships will be a first step at correcting this lapse."

With such little fanfare raised during this first selection, there is small hope. And, for some, that means the Kresge Prize has failed its larger purpose: that Detroit art will be discussed in a way it hasn't been for decades.

Two for the price of one

Cesar Marzetti, the museum’s curator, has written two versions of the same essay for the catalogue: one for those over 50 years old, and one for those younger.

“Our audience,” he explained, pulling his gray-tinged hair back into a ponytail, “they are of two distinct groups. One is the young academically avant-garde. Academic because for them art is made not to communicate but to be explained. The other is the old school. Those who take it all at face-value, simple technique and vision. One is hip, one is not."

CHANGING CITIES: Berlin

Changing Cities: Berlin

Selected artists

from

Galerie Eva Bracke

to exhibit at the

Museum of New Art

July 5 – August 9, 2008

Opening Reception Saturday, July 5, 6 – 9 pm

In the third installment of its Changing Cities exhibit exchange, Detroit's Museum of New Art (MONA) is proud to host selected artists from Galerie Eva Bracke in Berlin, Germany. Changing Cities is a project initiated by Jef Bourgeau, director of MONA, in order to swap artists from the Detroit region with their counterparts in other cities around the world. “The outside world isn't aware of the exciting work being created in Detroit's art community,” says Bourgeau. “This project will export this art to those who are always looking for something fresh and new.”

Previous exchanges brought a show curated by Chicago art consultant Paul Klein to MONA in April, 2007. That exhibit was followed in February 2008 with a show of Detroiter’s works at ThreeWalls Gallery in Chicago.

The exchange continues with the arrival in Detroit of an exhibit by the Berlin group chosen from Galerie Eva Bracke and titled Moving Walls: with Olivia Berckemeyer, Christoph Dettmeier, Andrew Gilbert, Franziska Hufnagel, Florin Kompatscher, Alexej Koschkarow, Joe Neave, Max Schulze and Astrid Sourkova.

Works include drawings, paintings, video and photographs.

In conjunction with the Berlin show, MONA will also mount an exhibit in her other galleries featuring Metro Detroit artists whose work will travel to Galerie Eva Bracke in November 2008. These two exhibitions will afford an opportunity to see the works of the German artists alongside those of their American counterparts.

Participating Detroit area artists include: Dietmar Krumrey, Rachel Hunt, Cyrus Karimipour, Alison Wong, Hartmut Austen, Stig Eklund, Mary Fortuna, Marla Karimipour, Dick Goody, Kelly Frank, Jacque Liu, Vagner Whitehead and Kyohei Abe.

Works will include drawings, paintings, video and mixed media works on paper, photographs and small sculptures.

Join us in welcoming this group of German artists to the area at an All-American opening reception and summer cookout on Saturday, July 5 from 6pm – 9pm.

blahblahblah

Late in the last century, the rise of theory spawned the rise of anti-aestheticism. Even for cultural theorists discussions concerning aesthetics were often carried out in a critical shorthand that failed to engage with the work of art, much less any notions of aesthetic experience. Any attempt to see the art object as embodying and conveying knowledge in itself quickly faded as an outdated conception.

People started to make art at university in response to what theory they read. The writing became fundamental in creating the art: it served the art and the art served the writing. The practical body of work suffered accordingly. Any changes in the discourses surrounding contemporary art became intimately linked to art education and to the artist's 'professionalization'.

Moving into this new century, the art object has become a distant concern. A work of art no longer applies as the source for one's conviction of its value. An art object is no longer visually distinct from a non-art object. Instead, its placement in an art space and context has orientated it within an established network of artistic practices, ideas, debates and modes of display otherwise known as the 'artworld'. This leaves art solely as an artworld activity, an institutional activity.

Such a peripheral focus makes a discussion of the art object irrelevant and instead targets art only in relation to accepted discourse, modes of representation and elucidation..

A revived aestheticism encourages the idea that the intrinsic impact of a work of art has the potential to open radically different ways of thinking about identity, politics and culture. If we encourage 'theory' to enter a more reflective phase, we can expect the appearance of a new aestheticism. At a moment that is often termed 'post-theoretical', this is a direct index to which there is a renewed willingness among critics and philosophers to consider the ways in which cultural theory often overlooked key aspects of the object.

Blahblahblahism restores a consideration of the physicality of the artwork, and of style and form. Blahblahblahism heralds a priority for art practice to develop organically, without being constricted by measurable criteria but reclaiming now-mythologized terms such as 'creativity', 'artist' and 'art': special qualities requiring freedom from any externally imposing theory.

MOVING WALLS

OPENING RECEPTION: August 11, Saturday from 6p to 9p

including: Thea Eck, Cyrus Karimipour, Jeffrey Mathews, Matthew Shlian, and Alison Wong

In the last several decades, Detroit has suffered a growing loss of cultural history, and, so, any real sense of place. The city’s art institutions have been debilitated by short-term memory and lack of local interest. Artists have quickly been lost to time, either through death or diaspora.

Currently, there is no established system, gallery nor collecting, for nurturing or encouraging an artist to stay and thrive; none for the necessary growth to create a career or even to form some collective identity of the city.

The new art collective MOVING WALLS will be one step in establishing a global art exchange under the auspices of the museum's CHANGING CITIES program: establishing a gallery HERE from which to gather a pool of Michigan artists, and then swapping these artists and work with artists in other cities and countries.

Exhibition: August 11 through September 1

Regular Hours: 12-6p, Thursday through Saturday

SELF MADE ARTISTS

THREE ARTISTS TOUR THE COUNTRY LIKE A ROCK BAND

Pontiac – Opening July 5, 2007 for one evening only (Thursday, from 6-8pm), the Museum of New Art will host the work of Self Made, a touring group of three visual artists from San Francisco.

Self Made’s means of delivering art is congruous with a rock band touring the country having one night shows or gigs. Detroit is one stop in a twenty-nine city tour that lasts approximately one month. In both their art and personalities the three artists of Self Made represent different roles band members embody: the rock star lead singer, the composed songwriter, and the structural percussionist. The art being installed ranges from large-scale photographic abstractions to intimate cutouts from plastic, mylar, and paper.

Kevin Park Hauser, a member of Self Made, will perform an unplugged set of “hopelessly sad songs.” After the opening the group will pick up and drive to the next stop of Chicago, IL.

JAMIE SPINELLO - Jamie Spinello utilizes cut paper and plastic to form constructions that merge ideas of shifting internal structures of the body and synthetic modification with the temporality of landscape. Her constructions, which seem to be caught in a state of transition, engaging both two and three-dimensional space through the layering transparent materials between Plexiglas and the suspension of cut paper with pins. She has exhibited in Mississippi, Oregon, and California. Her paintings are in collections in Mississippi, North Carolina, and California. In 2006, she received the Murphy Cadogan fellowship courtesy of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.

BRICE BISCHOFF - Brice Bischoff’s photographs act as empirical evidence taken from the physical world, which proves the presence of some object in reality. He has photographs in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. In 2006 he received a Murphy and Cadogen Fellowship in the Fine Arts from the San Francisco Foundation. His work has been shown internationally in Poland and Japan. Brice relocated from New Orleans, LA to San Francisco, CA and obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute.

KEVIN PARKS HAUSER - Kevin Parks Hauser is a minstrel of the contemporary condition; with passion and fervor, and a pure and innocent use of language, he exposes the heart wrenching and vapid structure of the everyday through the use of many different mediums. From visual manifestations in photography, video, and painting to song and dance performances, his body is the vessel for his work. He recently received his Master of Arts degree from New Genres department at the San Francisco Arts Institute.

DETROIT NOW: 12 x 12

ENJOY THE VIOLENCE

new paintings by Donald Cameron

March 9 - March 31

Modern artists dream of timelessness. They dream that their work might achieve a certain universality, never to be whittled by time or events. To this end, they avoid the specific, the topical, and the instant; in favor of moods, flavors, and current trends.

Images that appear daily in the media are so compelling that they become instant icons. By incorporating these images into one's work, certain artists invoke a visual interrogation of these icons. With the exception of Goya and a few others, this is an art that does not often survive itself. Created with such resolve and immediacy, this art rarely outlives its particular time and place.

It is a guileless art that comments on the moment, on our daily life, by reporting on the state of today's society and how men use power and how we act. It creates images that force us to interpret the moment, without embedded political statement or forced agenda. A chilling interpretation that, with time, becomes increasingly voiceless and vague. This is the danger of creating such art and of an audience not viewing it in the moment it was created. And such artists are the true avant-garde of their generation.

Donald Cameron's paintings explore the convergence of beauty and graphic violence in mass media. Violent Imagery is aestheticized with increasing profusion and subtlety. Electronic mass media is the culprit and we are the victims. Originally a problem of painting, aesthetic violence has historically been used for a variety of problematic purposes. From CSI to Doom to You-Tube war footage, the contemporary context has been entertainment.