Things Worth Remembering 2010: Doryun Chong

Doryun Chong is Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. What follows are his “Things Worth Remembering” for 2010:

Sites


Lee Ufan Museum, Naoshima

In 2010, I was lucky to see two remarkable art sites in Japan. This felt necessary because in recent years, I have to admit, I have grown weary of the “tourist-ification” or “event-ification” of contemporary art there. Ironically, perhaps, both the new Lee Ufan Museum designed by Tadao Ando on Naoshima island and Yukinori Yanagi’s Inujima Art Project – the latter more than a decade in the making – are located in one of the world’s most-hyped art tour destinations and were included as part of the art-tour event of the year, the Setouchi International Art Festival.
Regardless of the context, both are undeniably extraordinary. Quite possibly one of the best edifices by Ando, the Lee Ufan Museum was realized through an intimate collaborative conversation between the two creative giants and, at the same time, a subdued yet sublime study in scales. Yanagi’s project on the largely depopulated island of Inujima is a testament to the continuing relevance of the artist’s concern – obsession, even – with the strange phenomenon of a history of postwar Japan still haunted by specters like the American-written constitution and Yukio Mishima. One might say that the artist’s history now seems one-dimensional and simplistic, but its fossil- or artifact-like crystallization in the retrofitted building-cum-installation art project is a resolute statement on the dark shadows of the past.

Image credit: Photo ART iT.

Bi/triennales


Hiraki Sawa at APT6

This was another year of bi/triennale extravaganza in the Asia-Pacific. It seems groaning about the proliferation of these mega-exhibitions is a hackneyed yet still popular sport, and I myself sometimes fall into that pattern of behavior. Having said that, I felt energized and impressed by many of those I was fortunate enough to see this year:

6th Asia-Pacific Triennial (December 5, 2009, to April 5, 2010). This was already the sixth edition of APT, a venerable institution in the region, but the first that I had actually managed to see in person. The organizing institution, Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAG | GoMA), has made a remarkable, long-term commitment to showing and collecting art form the broader region. The show found an all-too-rare balance between the “biennale” art seen again and again on the international circuit and rarer selections such as an exhibition-within-the-exhibition of North Korean art, and a small, yet intriguing group of works from places like Myanmar. The QAG | GoMA curator Russell Storer, also one of the co-curators of 2011’s Singapore Biennale, told me that it has been necessary for the institution to acquire certain works out of countries like Myanmar because that’s the only way they are able to be shown overseas at all. Being a museum curator myself, I can vouch for what a commitment that is.

4th Auckland Triennial, “Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon” (March 12 to June 20). Organized by Natasha Conland, the curator of contemporary art at Auckland Art Gallery, this was a relatively small affair, with just over 30 artists, but covered an impressive geographic expanse – not only the immediate region (New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands), but also the Middle East, with a focus on Iran. The smart thesis on the fascination with travel and exploration that continues to stimulate the artistic imagination in our post-postcolonial era (I am reluctant to say this, but it may have come true) was given form in an elegant and lyrical, rather than didactic way.

17th Biennale of Sydney, “The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age” (May 12 to August 1). I have to admit thinking that artistic director David Elliott’s exhibition title at first seemed a bit tacky and overwrought. Turned out that the subtitle was taken from a fascinating figure, Harry Smith, an artist, filmmaker and ethnomusicologist who put together the compilation album Anthology of American Folk Music in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Taking inspiration from the bohemian mystic, Elliott put together, in my mind, an amazingly brave effort to unabashedly champion cultural diversity – a topic that has been rendered obsolete in recent years – and the issue of the still persisting lack of representation of artists of color and of “distant” cultures in high-profile art events. My applause to the curator.

8th Gwangju Biennale, “10,000 Lives” (September 3 to November 7). An exhibition both as grandiose humanist statement and as curatorial auteur-ism. The sprawling, yet tight exhibition was perfectly installed (to say that this couldn’t have been an easy feat to achieve is a vast understatement, especially at a venue infamous for its disorganization), but upon closer inspection showed some conceptual cracks. However, this may very well be an indication of a different kind of brilliance altogether. Personally, I can’t recall any other instance of continuing to think about an exhibition so much – with the exception of Documenta 12 (2007), but that’s a whole other story.

Media City Seoul 2010, “Trust” (September 7 to November 17). Opening almost simultaneously with the imposing Gwangju Biennale was a serious challenge, and yet proved to be a boon for this relatively modest affair in the nation’s capital. Put together by an international team of curators (Clara Kim, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fumihiko Sumitomo) working with artistic director Sunjung Kim, Media City Seoul unfortunately suffered from a small budget and a lack of infrastructural support, but the artists and works – many quite politically oriented – from disparate geographies and milieus sang together nicely with a shared sense of urgency. A rare thing to happen in a team-curated exhibition.

Image credit: Hiraki Sawa – O (2009), three-channel video projection, 10 short films on monitors, five-channel sound by Dale Berning on custom spinning speakers, color and black-and-white, 8 minutes, commissioned for APT6, courtesy the artist; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; and James Cohan Gallery, New York.

Solo Exhibitions


Haegue Yang

Here are some notable exhibitions that restored my faith in the idea that good art can teach you something about history, philosophy and psychology while still surprising you with unexpected formal languages:

Carol Bove, Kimmerich, New York (March 5 to May 1)

Abraham Cruzvillegas, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (October 23 to November 20)

Luis Jacob, Art in General, New York (September 16 to November 13)

Mark Manders, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (September 25, 2010, to January 2, 2011; traveling to Aspen Art Museum and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)

Paul Thek, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (October 21, 2010, to January 9, 2011)

Danh Vo, Artists Space, New York (September 15 to November 7)

Haegue Yang, Artsonje Center, Seoul (August 21 to October 24)

Image credit: Haegue Yang – installation view of Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Shadowless Voice over Three (2008) in the exhibition “Voice Over Three” at Artsonje Center, Seoul, 2010, photo ART iT.

Performance/Events


Matthew Barney & Jonathan Beppler’s KHU

Arguably, the event of the year in this field was Marina Abramovic’s Herculean performance of The Artist Is Present in the grand Atrium of the Museum of Modern Art Building in New York during the run of her exhibition of the same title, about which I wrote in a previous column. But in October, Matthew Barney – no stranger to dreaming big and upstaging even Abramovic’s scale of ambition – presented his most recent work, Khu, a 21st-century Grand Opera realized by scores of performers (actors, singers, all kinds of musicians, etc, etc).
It’s perhaps unfair to compare the two. The former was inside a museum, in New York, and seen by thousands of people everyday, while the latter was almost completely outside (that is, required almost eight hours outdoors in the abandoned industrial wasteland of a freezing, sleeting Detroit; near the end I began to worry I would catch pneumonia), and seen by a select group of no more than 100 or so invited guests. Khu is the third of a planned seven-part work interpreting Norman Mailer’s notoriously long and obtuse novel, Ancient Evenings, and is part of the artist’s continuously morphing and growing mythology that began with The Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002). A truly awe-inspiring experience, despite a snafu at the performance’s climax. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
If Khu was as much about the audience’s endurance as that of the performers, the two dance performances I saw this year were sublime testaments to the beauty of the human body and the power of muscular movements and measured controls: Ralph Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day And Not Go Anywhere at BAM and Eiko & Koma’s White Dance and Raven at Danspace Project.

Details: “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” Museum of Modern Art, New York, March 14 to May 31; Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler, KHU, multiple locations, Detroit, October 2; Ralph Lemon, How Can You Stay in the House All Day And Not Go Anywhere, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, October 13-16; Eiko & Koma, “Retrospective Project I: Regeneration,” Danspace Project, New York, May 27-29. Image credit: Matthew Barney & Jonathan Bepler – performance still from KHU, photo Hugo Glendinning, courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.

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Speaking of sublime: Tilda Swinton. Tilda-worship is so widespread now that it’s practically a cliché. Earlier this year I had given up on cinema because of my seemingly worsening ADD, which has not been helped by my main method of movie watching, on the plane. Having said that, I Am Love (Io Sono L’Amore), directed by Luca Guadagnino and produced by and starring the one-and-only Swinton, was one film I managed to view completely transfixed, with my mouth agape for the entire two-hour running time (Thank you, Korean Air!). Swinton’s time-reversing transformation from an Italian haute-bourgeois wife to a poor Russian woman plucked out of her previous life (and then forgotten) happens slowly and rather languidly, and then, in the film’s last 10 minutes, her face heartbreakingly gaunt and twisted from pain, love and honesty, the actress achieves one of the most incredible cinematic metamorphoses I have ever seen. John Adams’ soundtrack – sampled and patched together from the contemporary master-composer’s work of the last three decades – is simultaneously disquieting and glorious. I could go on and on. At the end of the day, I loved the film because it was so shamelessly sensuous.

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Things Worth Remembering 2010

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