16.
INTERNATIONAL
24.06 2010
<H>ART
Not For Tourists is an alternative guide to New York City’s contemporary art scene. In each <H>ART-edition, NY-based curator Niels Van
Tomme highlights a non-profit cultural organization. Ranging from
the well established to the marginal, from the intellectual to the politically engaged, Not For Tourists leads through the artistic heart of the
Big Apple. This episode offers an interview with Mary Ceruti, executive
­director and chief curator at SculptureCenter, a historically rich and
vibrant Queens hub for the most innovative sculptural work.
SculptureCenter is New York’s only
non-profit entirely dedicated to new
developments in contemporary sculpture. Started in 1928, are you trying
to keep a certain kind of legacy alive?
Ceruti: “Sure, we are. I can say with
some confidence that we are the oldest
artists run space in New York. We were
You became SculptureCenter’s chief
curator and executive director in ’99.
What are some of the most significant
sculptural developments that you have
witnessed in the last decade?
Giuseppe Penone (°1947, Garessio, Italy) addresses the contact between
man and nature. Until 26 September there is an exhibition of Penone’s
drawings and sculptures at De Pont in Tilburg, Netherlands. Its title
‘Nelle Mani – In the Hands’ seems to refer to the basis of Penone’s
conceptual and poetic work, which starts from his tactile experience
and attempts to understand and reflect on reality. The artist shows that
man is nature and that, in comparison to other aspects of nature, we as
humans have a relatively short existence. The following text is based on
an interview with him about his work as part of the project ‘Personal
Structures: Time Space Existence’.
Installation view SculptureCenter, © 2010 SculptureCenter and the artists, photo Jason Mandella
Ceruti: “I think sculpture has re­
claimed the space that installation art
overrode in the 90s. Perhaps in reaction
to the idea that everything is art and art
is everything, artists are making specif­
ic objects again. Donald Judd’s term is
quite useful in today’s discourse, even
though we seem to be far removed
from minimalism. Right now, sculpture
is created, and installed, with a finely
tuned sensitivity of its relationship to
the space it occupies and the other ob­
jects in that space, but it doesn’t rely on
that relationship to produce meaning.”
Your space is located in Queens. Are
there any advantages, or disadvantages, of being removed from the city’s
usual centers for contemporary art?
Ceruti: “Being outside the center grants
a degree of freedom. Our audience is
pretty dedicated and informed, a major­
ity being artists and other art profes­
sionals. When people make the trip to
our space they are really there to expe­
rience art. They haven’t wandered in as
a break from shopping or having lunch.
There are few spaces in Manhattan as
dramatic and beautiful as ours, and we
could never have afforded them.”
The summer is just around the corner, which is traditionally a calmer
month for the art world. Are there
any remarkable events planned at
SculptureCenter? What should one do
when stranded in New York City?
Ceruti: “Our current exhibition,
‘Knight’s Move,’ is a survey of sculp­
ture in New York at this moment. Some
excellent young artists have created
new work including David Brooks, Erin
Shirreff, Alex Hubbard, Carter and
Mika Tajima. It’s absolutely worth a
trip, and of course PS1’s ‘Greater New
York’ is on view a few blocks away.
If you’re stranded – say by a vol­
cano? – I would recommend a visit
to the Queens Museum. The Queens
Museum is a hidden treasure. Located
on the site of the 1964 World’s Fair,
they keep on permanent view the pan­
orama of the city of New York. It is a
9300 square foot model of the city of
New York including scale models of al­
most 900,000 buildings and structures.
Their current show, ‘The Curse of
Bigness’ is inspired by the panorama
and their current expansion project.”
I will interview Catherine Krudy of
Printed Matter next. What should be
my first question?
Ceruti: “What is her favorite binding
technique?”
Niels VAN TOMME
On view until June 26: ‘Knight’s Move’
SculptureCenter, 4419 Purves Street, Long Island
City, NY 11101-2907
http://sculpture-center.org/
An exhibition about the influence of Turkish migration on contemporary art
Journeys With No Return
The exhibition ‘Journeys With No Return’ is curated by three curators (Peter Cross, Levent Calikoglu and
Alice Sharp) from three different countries and focuses on the influence of Turkish migration on contemporary art. The curators have initiated the project without any institutional background though in collaboration with various institutions of funding and hosting in the three cities: Istanbul, London and Berlin. The first
two parts of the project have n been realised in Istanbul (at Aksanat during the 11th Istanbul Biennial) and
in London (at A Foundation), whereas the last part now takes place in Berlin.
The concept was inspired by the cel­
ebrated Turkish poet, writer and po­
litical figure Nazim Hikmet. Hikmet’s
poem ‘Angina Pectoris’ is used as a
reference point. The project focuses
on the effect of Turkish migration,
and inspiringly involves artists who do
not necessarily belong to the Turkish
Community. The selection of the art­
ists has been made on the basis of the
artists’ personal migration stories: ei­
ther they are currently migrants or are
coming from immigrant backgrounds.
The project ambitiously deals with
the theme of migration over the last
50 years. A series of conferences, resi­
dencies and commissions are produced
in conjunction with each phase of the
touring exhibition. In total 16 artists
(Nevin Aladag, Kiran Kaur Brar, Ergin
Çavusoglu, Adam Chodzko, Jurgen
Eisenacher, Margareta Kern, Melanie
Manchot, Olaf Metzel, Mike Nelson,
Olaf Nicolai, Denizhan Ozer, Maya
Schweizer, Zineb Sedira, Asli Sungu,
Nasan Tur, Clemens von Wedemeyer)
from various countries were selected to
participate, some of which were asked
to produce new pieces during their resi­
dencies in Istanbul, Berlin and London.
Restricted
One of the aims of the project is to
celebrate difference in togetherness.
Although the conceptual framework
of the project and the activities are
quite promising, the outcome proved
to be quite unsatisfactory and doesn’t
fulfil its promises of approaching
Turkish migration in its last fifty years
by means of various artistic perspec­
<H>ART 24.06 2010
tives. The conference at the Goethe
Institute, London was rather unpro­
ductive. Its subject matter merged
into discussion of diaspora and immi­
gration conditions whereby only the
‘Turkish’ focus on migration and inte­
gration circulated. This disappointing­
ly led to some of the works being read
by the audience as artists who work
under the conditions of the migratory
suppression. Hence not leaving the
space for the works to stand on their
own and to produce their own cathar­
sis. Nevin Aladag’s ‘Raise the Roof ’
(2007) performance which can be
solely related to music and dance, was
sadly restricted by the curators as an
expression of Aladag’s being Turkish
in a foreign country and at the same
time a foreigner in Turkey because
of her Kurdish background. And Asli
Sungu’s four-piece video work ‘Faulty’
(2008) was chosen as only presenting
vulnerable Turkishness dominated by
the Germans even in her own house­
hold practice. Olaf Metzel’s pieces are
illustrative of the fact that the narrow
terminology of the classification is not
able to produce anything further than
a discussion around headscarves.
Ergin Cavusoglu’s precise threechannel video installation ‘Silent Glide’
(2008-2009) evolves around a narrative
of a love encounter and its defining con­
ditions. The lovers live in a town domi­
nated by a freighter’s port and a mas­
sive cement factory. The dust not only
covers the streets but also has a physi­
cal, emotional and sensuous impact.
Nasan Tur’s playful work consists of an
installation of backpacks produced in
2006, which have been specially crafted
17.
‘It is necessary
to touch’
‘Where artists
are welcome as
artists’
founded over 80 years ago and artists
still serve actively on our board. The
founders worked primarily in clay and
stone. In fact, the organization’s origi­
nal name was ‘The Clay Club.’ That
said, we aren’t wedded to a particular
sculptural tradition. We resist any insti­
tutional definition of sculpture in favor
of allowing artists to tell us what they
think sculpture is at any given moment.
So the legacy we’re trying to keep alive
is one that values artistic experimenta­
tion and allows the artists’ position to be
foregrounded. We do historical shows
and thematic exhibitions, but what we
really offer is the opportunity to cre­
ate new work in dialogue with peers.
Between the star-curator phenomena,
the institutionalization of institutional
critique, and the pressure for museums
to raise money from individual donors,
there aren’t many places where artists
are welcome as artists, and encouraged
to pursue their own lines of inquiry.”
INTERNATIONAL
Giuseppe Penone’s ‘Nelle Mani– In the Hands’
in De Pont, Tilburg (NL)
Not For Tourists (7): SculptureCenter
Previously I interviewed Sina Najafi
from Cabinet and asked him what
my first question should be to you: “If
you had to make a paper sculpture
every day for the rest of your life, what
would it be?”
Mary Ceruti: “I’m a bit challenged in
the digital dexterity department, so I
think I would have to go with Rachel
Harrison’s ‘Straws and Spitballs.’
Sina, Matt Freedman and I curated
a show several years ago called ‘The
Paper Sculpture Show,’ which was also
a book called ‘The Paper Sculpture
Book.’ We invited a few dozen artists
to design paper, and the audience then
made the sculptures in the show.
Rachel gave us a scan of a sheet of her
slides and a design for a straw that you
could cut out and roll. Then you could
chew up her work and spit it out.”
<H>ART 24.06 2010
for various objectives such as open-air
cooking, instant public speech... The
videos document the usage of these
backpacks by an ordinary audience
and how they produce content with the
ingredients supplied by the artist.
Picturesque
Melanie Manchot’s double portraits
bring together people who have been
living far from each other by migrating
abroad. The photographic quality and
the expressions make them appear as
rather dry illustrations. Kiran Kaur
Brar, during her residency at Koridoor
arts in Istanbul, has been finding simi­
larities between the Punjabi language
and Turkish. This has led Brar to make
a documentary video about male hair
salons. As Mark Nash commented in
the conference held in London, Brar’s
residency does not go beyond the ob­
jectifying of picturesque representa­
tions of a culture. The double screen
video comes over as a futile production
of one’s visit to an unknown geography
and is more an anthropological prac­
tice than an artistic one.
Adam Chodzko participates in the
project with two works: ‘White Magic’,
a slide installation in Istanbul and
‘Silent Pickers’ (2009), a video installa­
tion in London. The latter is a concep­
tually dense work that demands the
audience’s patience in order to grasp
the content. Chodzko, by allowing the
people he has filmed to edit the piece,
attempts to involve them in the pro­
duction of their own images. Leaving
the problem of integration behind,
Chodzko seeks for the gaze of his sub­
With his work, Penone aims to utilize
and show already existing forms in a
new way. “My work is based on simple
elements and it is above all a sculp­
tural practice. My work is not a work
on representation: it is a work related
to materials.” Conform the style of
the Italian movement Arte Povera
of which he was the youngest mem­
ber, the artist uses natural materials,
such as stone and wood. Persistence
and duration are important qualities
for him: these natural materials live
in the present and last through time.
Penone’s sculptures evolved from the
1960s, a time in which many social,
artistic and poetical values were ques­
tioned, as well as conceptions of real­
ity that stemmed out of the 1800s and
prior to that. “The debate surrounding
values, and the craving to understand
the new worldview after the war, lead
to an absolute reduction of values and
a desire to begin from the most el­
ementary and basic forms.”
For Penone this meant a focus on
‘touch’ and ‘sight’ in an elementary
way. Even though he remarks that
reality is based on many aspects, the
tactile experience of the world is most
important to the artist. Where a visual
experience can deceive us, touching
something means having a direct rela­
tion of the body with reality. This di­
rect relation offers the possibility to be
more precise in what surrounds you
and, according to Penone, this makes
it important for sculpture. “By touch­
ing the work you can understand the
Ergin Çavusoglu, ‘Silent Glide’, 2008, Three channel synchronized (1080i) HD video installation,
sound, 25’, continuous loop, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist, Haunch of Venison,
London, and Galerist, Istanbul
jects and asks to be gazed back. Mike
Nelson’s installation ‘Procession, proc­
ess. Progress, progression. Regres­
sion, recession. Recess, regress’ (2009)
is a massive piece of concrete which
could be the floor of a newly build
apartment or the remains of an al­
ready destructed one. Nelson’s piece
is a prequel for a proposed piece that
never got realised for the 8th Istanbul
Biennial. He proposed to have a cast
made in concrete of one of the wooden
Ottoman buildings of the city, a sort of
lost Kemalist modernism. Oscillating
between a sculpture and an installa­
tion object Nelson’s massive piece ap­
pears like a blockage in the continuum
of the exhibition.
In between
Olaf Nicolai approaches the con­
cept of the exhibition from the liter­
ary perspective. By producing two
golden rings reading ‘Mundus Totus
Exilium Est’ inside and outside, he is
searching for his imaginary partner to
agree and associate with the meaning
of the saying which stands for: ‘he is
perfect to whom the entire world is a
foreign land’ – a quote from 12th cen­
tury Hugo de St. Victor. Zineb Sedira’s
‘Middle Sea’ (2008), a video installa­
tion, is visually and conceptually a
pleasing work. The piece takes place
on a boat – a non-place place, thus tak­
ing its audience to a calm voyage to the
unknown from the unknown. Clemens
16.
Penone’s idea of touching as a way to
verify the world around you is not the
only aspect of touching that is present
in his work. Also important is the idea
of leaving a trace: touching a sur­
face means leaving behind an image.
These traces or images seem to show
your existence. The artist says that he
started from this idea of leaving be­
hind a trace. “When you actually touch
something, you leave an image – not a
cultural image but an animal kind of
image. This is an image that anyone
can leave; it is only the elaboration of
this image, which brings meaning to
the image itself and thereby becomes
a work of art.”
When touching the surface of an ob­
ject, Penone believes that your hand
takes the form of the surface you
touch. According the artist, the skin
is “a boundary, a border or divid­
ing point”. This means that the skin
reflects the relief of the surface. He
also mentions that this initial image
belongs to everyone, not only to the
artist. It is an automatic image, like
breathing. “When you breathe you re­
lease a different volume of air, which
is itself a sculpture. The meaning of
sculpture is exactly this: to introduce a
form with space. Breathing therefore
is creating sculpture automatically. I
use breathing as an example to fur­
ther underline the elementary aspect
of this gesture. My work stems from
these considerations, simple things
and actions, such as the act of touch­
ing, opening the eyes and by defining
the body itself as a sculpture.”
The way we seem to deal with these
traces or images is remarkable for the
artist. “When you touch something,
you leave traces that are continuously
cancelled, removed, since these marks
are considered dirty. We spend most
of our existence cancelling our traces,
yet we actually affirm our existence
through and by these traces.” Penone
adds that the cancellation of and affir­
mation through our traces is a contra­
dictory situation and requires reflec­
tion: “Art is the affirmation of its own
existence through images.”
Poetry
According to Penone, nature itself
would be the perfect work of art. But
he adds that art is language and there­
fore imperfect: it is a means to affirm
one’s identity. A good artwork touches
your existence, he says. “When you
produce a work that touches your
existence it becomes conceptual and
poetical. A work of art that touches
one’s existence is itself poetic and con­
ceptual, because life is something ex­
traordinary and moving – or it would
not be life. Poetry shares this reveal­
ing and surprising characteristic; a
poetical conception of reality is part of
existence. The word ‘conceptual’ can
be used to mean the rationalization of
the emotions, to rationalize our amaze­
ment towards existence itself. The
work of art is complete when it con­
jugates, when it puts these two things
into relation. If an artwork were only
conceptual, it would fall into dogmatic
fact; if it is only poetical and therefore
not rational, it would be life, pure emo­
tion. Since art is language, by its very
nature it must relate the concept with
the idea of poetry.” To Penone it is im­
portant that each artwork has both
components; it should be a combination
of poetry and concept otherwise the
work will lack linguistic strength.
The consequence of an incomplete
work, Penone states, is that it will not
last the test of time. “The artwork may
actually function as a work of art, but
only for a limited period of time. On
the other hand, if the artwork is able to
move people, although this emotional
response is difficult to rationalize, this
is actually the aspect that keeps the
work alive through time.” To last the
test of time, an artwork must have a
certain visual immediacy and simplicity.
But after the attention is caught, there
must be other levels of interpretation
to keep thinking about it and which get
amplified according to the cultural con­
text and different levels of sensitivity of
the public. Penone wants the work to
become part of the viewer. And he adds:
“The works on view must (…) to some
degree be appropriated by those who
view the work, but the work must also
be surprising. If it doesn’t surprise, it
cannot communicate a message.”
Karlyn DE JONGH
is an independent curator
www.depont.nl
Statues and other monuments in the public
space: we walk past them every day, genera­
lly without more than a moment’s considera­
tion. They remind us of an event, honour an
important person, express a feeling of shared
pride... Monuments make a bid for eternity.
This has been the case primarily since the 19th
century. But how about in our time? Does such
a ‘public monument with a message’ still have
a future? Will other kinds of monuments start
appearing? What could art in the public space
signify? The monument is dead, long live art?
The Middelheim Museum, which is responsi­
ble for public art in Antwerp, invited fourteen
artists to consider the relevance of the monu­
ment in our time. Three questions stand cen­
tral to this exhibition of new works from the
fourteen artists: for whom or what can an ar­
tist still create a meaningful monument in this
day and age? As an artist, how do you relate to
the patron? And, in our rapidly changing and
complex time, is such a fixed and ‘eternal’ mo­
nument still relevant?
All of the selected artists are familiar with
Belgium. The new works they have created
for the occasion are exhibited in Middelheim
Park. Some of them make a break from the
tradition of the monument, while others ex­
pand on the existing visual language, provi­
ding an interesting interaction. Picture: ‘Foro’
of Jan De Cock.
Fatos USTEK
is an independent art critic and curator
and editor of ‘nowiswere’.
INTERNATIONAL
Trace
Giuseppe Penone, ‘Geometria nelle mani’, 2005, bronze, stainless steel, 134 x 153 x 173 cm, photo Paolo Mussat Sartor
‘New Monuments’ at
Middelheim Antwerp
von Wedermeyer’s video piece ‘Otjesd’
(2005), explores this concept even fur­
ther than Sedira. Wedermeyer has
filmed a border crossing where the
protagonists are continuously looped
while passing through customs and
passport control. As in an undefined
in-between. Denizhan Ozer’s installa­
tion exhibited both in Istanbul and in
London is a construction of a kebab
cookery in the form of pentagon where
the portraits of workers are placed on
‘shish’ (kebab sticks).
The works in the exhibitions vary
in visual and conceptual production.
Some very strong works are accom­
panied by poor ones which leads to
an imbalance of the whole project.
Neither the catalogue, which mentions
only the recent curriculum of the par­
ticipating artists, nor the conferences
held around the project furthers the
investigation of the effect of Turkish
Migration. In other words, in contrast
to its objectives, the project is an im­
possible mix of works, positions and
stances. And maybe on that level, it is
a journey with no return.
The exhibition ‘Journeys with No Return’ started in
2009 in Istanbul, ran in February 2010 in London
and is opened at the Kunstverein Tiergarten in
Berlin in June 2010, concurrent with the 6th Berlin
Biennale (June 11-August 10).
http://www.journeyswithnoreturn.com/content/exhibi­
tions/london.html
medium, you can define space and the
volume of the object, but it is above all
a way to verify its form.” The artist
adds that the same counts for materi­
als: “When you see a shiny object, it
could be a solid or a fluid; in order to
verify the material you must touch it.
This demonstrates that sight is decep­
tive, it is a convention. When you need
to verify something, it is necessary to
touch it, sight isn’t enough. (…) With
touching there is a greater adhesion to
the truth in comparison with seeing.”
‘New Monuments’, till September 19 2010 in Middelheim
Museum, Antwerp.
www.middelheimmuseum.be
photo: jean-pierre stoop
17.
INTERNATIONAL
24.06 2010
<H>ART