Unseencontexts
How To Look At _Invie!
by Ralph Rugort
Index of Artists
wes Klein
Yoko Ono
Clses Oldenburg
Apt & Language
Robert Barry
Janes Lee Byars
Chrte Burden
Andy Warho!
Tehening Hsten
Horet Honesse
Gianni Mott
Maurizio Cattelan
‘Ton Priedan
Jochen Gera
Bruno Jakob
Song. Dong.
Carsten Holler
Terese Margolles
Jay Chung
Ceal Ployer
Mario Garcia Torres
Jeppe Hein
Bethan Huws
Glenn Ligon
Roman Ondék
Lsi Chih-steng
List of works
Picture Credits
Acknowledgzents
Colophonsible — and this 1s certainly open to debate ~ that the history
fe we might cail ‘invietbie art’ began on May 14, 1957. On
ite at Galerie Colette Allendy in Paris, Yves Klein opened an
feion that included a seemingly empty room. According to the
| however, the white walls of that space were infused with
sence of ‘pictorial sensibility in the raw state’. Klein's
tation of blank walls ss an artwork arguably kicked off a
jfile tradition that has gone on to span seven decades
fe: Art about the Unseen, 1957-2012 brings together key sonents
Ghis Fich history in order to reflect on the myriad motives and
that have led artists to engage the invisible, the unseen
he hidden.
in famously went on to explore the invisible in numerous ways
fing with Jean Tinguely in 1958, he Investigated the possibility
king sculptures out of air. And until his death in 1962, ne
iaborated with architects and engineers on a utopian schene
freating an architecture de l’air. Klein envisioned collective
tats protected from the elements by invisible walls and ceilings
ited with jets of forced air. To his thinking, air architecture
fid not only nurture ‘a constant awareness of space’, but would
jp dissolve repressive social mores and conventions. Humanity
ld live in a state of grace, free from concealment and secrets.
Klein, who applied for s patent for his ‘air roof’, regarded air
hitecture as a hugely significant project, but in teras of the
istory of invisible art, his empty 1958 exhibition at the Galerie
is Clert created a more far-reaching legacy. Entitied The
ectalisation of Sensibility in the Raw Material State of
abil ised Pictorial Sensibility, also knows as “The Void", it consisted
‘an apparently unoecupied gallery in which every surface had been
inted white. Klein, however, maintained that the space was actu-
ily saturated with s foree field so tangible that some people were
Gnable to enter the exhibition ‘as 1f an invisible wall prevented
then’. Otner visitors may Rave been unable to enter the gallery
‘sinply because the exhibition's widespread press coverage ensured
Ene presence of a constant eroWd of spectators searching for sone-
thing to look at.
‘The Vold, which has provoked hugely divergent interpretations
over the years, 1s a landaark if the Bistory-of the invisibie, but
its impact for subsequent art has had less to do with Klein's stated
concerns than with {ts form: its audaetous framing of empty space ss
fa work of art. Its influence was paralleled, meanwhile, by another
Set of developments that anticipated Klein's sustained romance with
the unseen. In the suaaer of 1951, Robert Rauschenberg had produced
a series of Wiiite Paintings while ensconced as part of the artistic
conmunity at Blaek Mountain College, near Asheville, North Carolina.
These nodular monochrome canvases were the antithesis of the
Abstract Expressionist painting that then reigned in New York.gr John Cage,
and colle
Rauschenberg
yntsin College,
their unin
faces as ‘land~
js? for ambient
fghadox. (Partly
iby their exanple,
ged his fanous
952, a work unten
a pianist sitting
jp at a plano for
ites and 33 seconds,
the only ‘music’
fence heard were
Widentel sounds in
pironaent). In 1953,
henberg began
fing ways to create
ye without imeges,
he initially aid
king drawings and
erating them. Unsat-
with the results,
eventually deter
fA that ne needed to
something that was
jeady considered a
stantial work of art.
fended up persuading
flen de Kooning, one
the giants of the New York School of painting, to give him a
ying for this purpose. The result, after # month of hard work
ith « rubber, was Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) 2 contrarian
ierpiece created by making an existing work invisible.
Wot coincidentally, both Rauschenberg and Cage had been influm
jeed by the thinking and art of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp, who took
jeption to wnat he called ‘retinal art" — the idea that art was
dimartly aimed at the eye — nad made a sculpture out of air and
jase in 1919 - 50 cc of Paris Air, which consisted only of @ glass
jpoule that, despite ite title, may have contained something more
fike 125 cubic centimetres of air. In other works from around this time,
[Duchamp made reference to invisible phenomena including radio waves.
(rays, magnetism, and tne fourth dimension, Besides reflecting
yhis antagoniem tovards ‘retinal art’, these works also drew on the
General interest at the time in the unseen @imenstons of existence,
OT (A) Marcel Duohanp, $0 <0 of Paris Air, 1919ies and other sciences were then dramatically revealing.
iB beck on that period in an essay on Duchamp and Francis
Inritten in 1949, Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia observed, ‘It would
reover, that in every field, a principle direction of the
fh century was the atteapt to capture the *non-perceptibie"."
fhd Duchanp’s intrigue with the unseen, nis most profound
ion the future of invisible art was his notion that an artwork
ever fully realised in the mind of ite audience. In a speech
American Federation of Artists in 1957, Duchamp declared that
eative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator
The work in contact with the external world by deciphering
fterpreting ite inner qualifications and thus adds his (ner)
bution to the ereative act’. This creative work undertaken by
i@tence ensures that even the most consplouously visible types
fe have an added, unseen dimension. Tt may also lead us to wonder
yr art necessarily requires a physical object. It ts worth
fing here the exemplary practice of St Petersburg's Hermitage
iS during the Second Vorld War: having stashed its invaluable
Ieol lection for safe-keeping, the museum continued to operate its
janne of guided tours, with docents describing the absent art
enory whilst leading soldiers through rooms ccupied only by
yy frames and plinths,
be early 1960s, only a few years after Duchamp's memorable
job, Yoko Ono invented new art form that specifically addressed
Wiewer’s imagination as its intended site of creation. In 1962
he Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo, she displayed a series of
feruction Paintings that consisted of paper sheets with typed
feructions” that asked the reader to think about particular
fons, images and imsginary scenarios. Ono explaines that ner
iStruction Paintings ‘can be realised by different people in many
ifferent ways. This allove infinite transformation of the work that
artist himself eannot foresee." Ono's works, whose realisation
4 only take place in the mind of ts reader, entailed a radical
farture from traditional ideas about the role of the artist. They
fiso noved away from the conventional requirement that art take
fisuel form, On the contrary, her instruction paintings, in ner
fords, made “it possible to explore the invisible, the world beyond
fe concept of tine and space’. Ono's text pieces looked forward to
pects of Conceptual Art, which in the late 1960s would usher in, to
jorrow Lucy Lippard’s sweeping phrase, a ‘dematerialisation of art’
fet even before Conceptual Art came of age, the idea of invisibility
as siready in the air, turning up in sone unlikely places. In 1963,
Mandy Warhol, wno was already well on his way to becoming a highly
Misible media celebrity, produced @ couple of ‘pornographic’ paint-
Kings, using fluorescent inks, that appeared to be blank canvases,
revealing their hidden content only when seen under ultraviolet 1ight.along witn films ike Blow Job (3963) (wnten depicts
Gace of nan on the receiving end of the eponymous sex act)
festions that Warhol aimed at tne harsh anti-pornography
je tine, whicn tightly controlled what could be made visibie
hhaa to be left unseen
je sphere of public art, meanvhile, disiilustonment with
jai political monumente gave birth to what art historian
Michalski nas
im ‘new art form:
fis which tried to
Apvisibility as
fof engendering
fiion on the limi-
js of monumental
, Curiously, Claes
gburg, better known
js ‘sort’ sculptures
Weryday objects,
's pioneering role
fie ares. His Proposed
ground Nenorial and
Tor Presiaent John
gnnedy (1965), called
i huge hollow casting
j@ on a photograph
‘the assaseinated Pres
int to be buried head~
mm; @ tiny hole in the
ound offering = view
fo the statue's inte
jor would provide the
ly access point for
ula-be spectators. Far
jacia civic Monument
967) the artist mired @
grew of municipal grave=
[ggers to dig a hole in
jew York's Central Park,
just benina the Metro~
fpolitan Museum of Art.
Made at a monent when the
Wictnan War was escalating, the rectangular pit briefly conjured an
inverted plinth as well as an open grave before tt: was filled in only
ours after deing dug. The provocative low profile of Oldenbure’s
Meounter-sonumente’, and the ides of conjuring trauma and tragedy
‘through absence, would be taken up 20 years later in commemorative
projects addressing the holocaust and civil violence by artistsHloheisel, Jochen derz and
tie
econd half of the 19608, a
ber of artists associated
iE strains of Conceptual Art
Iueing work that defied the
JAI notion thet an art object
Hing you can look st. In 1967,
Baldwin, co-founder with Terry
Of the Britisn collective art
jge, published an article in
azine entitled "Remarks on Air—
Ming: An Extravaganza of Bland-
hat proposing @ volume of air in
iy, air-conditioned gallery could
tute a work of art. Physically
ged in 1972 at the Visual Arts
ry in New York, Art & Language’s
Air - conditioning show was accos—
By a lengtny and difficult text
ing the case for its status as
fiven that there was nothing else
jok at in the gallery, the reading
text essentially comprised the view-
fof the artwork. As Baldwin explaine
Wanted to suggest that fundamental
@ultural production 1s description:
ft things are noticed and attended
fot in virtue of sone “naturally”
ous assertiveness but in respect of
fturally, instrusentally and astertally conditioned discursive
vit.”
This ‘critical’ wing of Conceptual Art tended to focus on the
eituttonal framevorks and structures that shape the production
presentation of artworks. Across the Atlantic, Los Angeles-based
bist Michael Asher produced 2 series of works between 1966 snd 1969
fat used industrial air blowers to create ‘walls’, ‘curtains’, and
jlunns’ of accelerated air that were placed in relation to particu-
yp elenents in a gallery's areniteeture in order to subtly modify,
ind perhaps make more self-conscious, the visitor's experience of
lnoving through the exhibition space. For a 1978 show st Claire Copley
IGaiiery in Los Angeles, Asher’s sole intervention consisted of taking
Jout the walls that separated the gallery office fron the exhibition
Ispace. Rather than aerely presenting an empty gallery, Asher’s piece
Eby revealing the otherwise unseen work of the gallerist at ner
Gesk — put on display teeues related to labour and the selling of
lart. As Asher’s work makes evident, the display of a vacant gallery ~
12 (6) Arts Language, toning show, 1967imerely being a display of ‘nothingness’ ~ always involves
Ioncerns about = particular context and set of intentions
Hmpuise to nove avay from making tangible objects also
i fora of resistance to wnat many artiste at that time sav
Mneressing pover of the marketplace to determine the signifi
YE works of art. It may also have been a response, in part at
Eo the energence of a burgeoning ‘culture industry’ fueled
media and advertising. Against the background of a society
Gages held vay, artiste like Barry Le Va maintained that
fe 4s something that can’t be seen’. Lawrence Weiner, meanvhile,
Sted s radical ‘declaration of intent’ regarding the execu
IGE his ovn language-pased art, that included the stipulation
fice conceived, » work did not have to be made. The proposition
Ben artwork does not have to take material forn — that its being
ie is merely an option - ealls into question the prerogatives of
jehip. By limiting their work to a purely speculative or theo-
fal condition, artiste might defy the exclusivity and control
fly exercised by those who can afford to possess it, wnetner
tutions or inaiviauals.
iE the same tine, the development of intangible artworks signaled
firt avay from the notion of the art object as a self-containe
Bitory of meaning. It also re-directed attention from the
Mist's role as ‘author’ to that of the
fiver’ — a term that perhaps connotes
passive @ position, especially as
(Of the most compelling invisible
& from this period invitea very
five (mental) participation from ite
fence. This vas certainly the case
fen the work of Robert Barry. For nis
rt Gas Series (1969), Barry released
jimercially available ‘noble’ gases,
jeh a helium and neon, into the
fmosphere at sites around Southern
@iifornia, With regards to his using
ff undetectable aaterisl! to cre-
fie an environmental scuipture of
iReasurable dimensions, Barry remarked that sn sudience's
Aderstanding of the work and appreciation really liad to be
jotally mental. One would have to use one’s imagination." Indeed,
jarry’s photographie documentation of these works — banal inage
lof the different sites where he released gases — leaves everything
ko the imagination, while underscoring the limitations of visual
representation (in addition, Barry publicised his actions with a
poster advertising an exhibition of the Inert Gas Series st Seth
IStegelaub's Gallery — sn ‘invisible’ gallery which existed only as
fa telephone number and an answering machine)fhe late 1960s, Barry produced gallery-based works using
of immaterial media, including electromagnetism, radio
and ultrasonic sound ~ forms of energy that, as ne noted,
Outside the narrow arbitrary Limite of our own senses’
je of these works, visitor participation was involuntary:
Carrier Wave pieces (1968), for instance, which consisted
Ho Waves generated by @ hand-engineered transmitter, the
ible) form of the plece was affected by the presence of people
Bellery, inasmuch as radio waves can be absorbed, reflected
Fracted by the human body.
iFry summed up ancther approach to the unseen with nis 1969
iehic Piece, which appeared only as a Dracketed statement in
fibition catalogue:
Ping the exhibition, I w1l1 try to conmunteste telepathically
work of art, the nature of whieh 16 a series of thoughts that
yre nlot applicable to language or image.
FFY'S paradoxical conmunteation ostensibly prepares us to re-
fan impossible message: what kind of ‘thoughts’, after all, can
gE outside of verbal and visual representation? Much of Barry's
isible art plays on this kind of dialogue between presence and
fence. It conjures the unknowable as a space of possibility that
Hes our desire to pin down meanings and fix things in place, At the
time, it underscores the subjective nature of interpretation.
jerviewed in the catalogue for the exhibition Prospect “69 at
Diisseldorf Kunsthalle, Barry stated that hia piece in the show
sists of the ideas that people will have from reading this
view. The piece tn its entirety 1s unknowable because it ex-
js in the minds of so many people. Each person can really know
ft part which ts in his own mind.”
The motif of absence also played a Key role in the work of
jes Lee Byars, who — not unlike Klein — persistently questioned
relationship between physicality and immateriality. In nis
fnimal and ephemeral performances and installations, Byars regu-
ly conjured absence by evoking his own mortality (in the 19708
would organise a ‘Death Lottery’ to prematurely mark his own
ise, and once invited Salvador Dali to Hollywood to film nis
wh, an invitation Dali refused). In 1969, at the Eugenia Butler
Dery in Los Angeles, the artist presented This te the Ghost of
yes Lee Byars Calling, an installation that consisted of a red
mm with a small hole in the ceiling providing the only source
Light. Like a commemorative exercise aimed at reconstructing
je presence of the absent artist, participants were invited to
fad aloud letters sent Into the gallery by various acquaintances,
lescribing Byars. Lert to mentally shuffle through the competing
lescriptions, visitors to the exhibition could only arrive at an
inconclusive portrait of thelr unseen subject:Pyapproach in this work is a long way from Klein's notion
@ space with ‘inssterial sensipility', as it foregrounds
bsence, rather than an occult presence. In the 19708,
iden created a nusber of works that further developed the
KEhe artist's absence as a carrier of content, in lieu of
nal soulptural forn. For nis first performance, Pive ~ Day
Mece (1971), Burden spent five consecutive days concealed
While remaining inside a 2x 2 x 3 - feet locker at the
lity of california, Irvine. Later that same year for a
ince entitled You'll Never See My Pace in Kansas city, ne
ME moving for three hours behind a panel that concealed
yk and head; in conjunction with the performance, he wore
fk at all times during the three days he spent in Kansa:
jPden’s interest in hiding reached a climax with his 1975
fEion White Light / White Heat, for which the artist spent
Ineeks at the Ronald Feldman Geilery in New York lying on an
fed platform, high enough so that visitors could not see nia
enained in a prone position at the back of the platform
feonnented at the tine thst he was curious to discover whether
s to the gallery ould be able to sense his presence even
fy could not actually observe hin. But rather than comprising
iPentric experiment testing uncharted areas of human percep-
White Light / Wnite Hest sens sore like a esleulated gesture
FPeplaces the avant-garde's traditional hostility towards its
ee with @ paseive-aggressive withholding. Burden had already
ived extensive press coverage in his brief career, appearing in
Magazine as well as on the cover of Artforum, and his unseen
mice in the gallery might well have been aimed at frustrating
ffors drawn by hts notoriety.
ar before Burden’s exhibition, London-based artist Gustav
ger had proposed @ worldwide withholding of artistie production.
n by his conviction that capitalism had ‘smothered’ art (and
made “real art’ invisible), Metzger formulated nis proposal Art
ke 1977-1980, which called for a three-year period during which
fete will not produce work, sell work, permit work to go on
fibitions, and [vill] refuse collaboration with any part of the
Giicity machinery of the art world’. Metager’s proposal for global
fon was never realised, but @ Little over @ decade later in New York
Mist Tenening Hsien created a personal, and markedly different,
ion of an art strike, On New Year’s Eve in 1986, Hsieh began hi
ishing Hsieh 1986-1999, a type of invisible performance during
jen, so he declared in a signed statement, he would continue
make art but would not show 4t. Rather than making a political
ftement, Hisien’s undertaking seems closer to an exercise In huntlity,
eg0-stripping practice designed to force artist and audience
fike to rethink the desire to exhibit, and to question the valueiBce on public approbation in general. Designed so that it eon-
fon the artist's 50th birthday and the end of the millennium,
ling sich 1986-1999 offerea the tonte example of someone acting
jan unseen but deeply felt systen of values, rather than seeking
IReacure of hinself from the external world.”
Wer the past 20 years, artists have continued to experiment
the ides of invisible srt, fashioning new approaches and
Mloring conceptual verritories that range from the
Hosophical to the pointedly humorous,
the meditative to the polities!
aps more than any other artist during
IS period, Bruno Jakob has concentrated
Me inviesbie as the central focus of
work. A painter, Jakob has developed
jerai methods of making invisible
lures: instead of pigment, he paints
ih various types of water, as well as
geen colours’, He has exposed canvases
rain and sun, and has used thes to
ord the faint trails left by snails.
iBeesting s link to photographic pro-
ses, he has also brought canv
ito close proximity with individual
jople and animals in order to capture
jae transferable form of their energy.
lent be expected, most of nis canvases
(2 drawings look more or less blank,
gE rather than being characterised by
Jack of visible elements, Jakob's work
js built around the disappearance o
Images: the canvas 1s the scene of a vanishing (as the pictures ne
jas dravn with water have evaporated). We are left to reconstruct
jelr different subjects by responding to the titles of the works,
fhe lists of materials used, and the faint traces of activity left
paper or canvas.
Our experience of Jakob’s art 1s inseparable from our knoviedge
lof how it is made. Tne same holds true for an astonishing trio of
Drorks that Tos Friedman created in 1992 during a flurry of 1
Abie activity. Priedman’s Untitled (A Curse) appears at first
leven second) glance to consist only of an unoeeupied plinth, yet
ents sculpture enacts a distinctly non-utopian revival of Kiein's
Practice of ‘sensibilising* empty space. Subcontracting the nystical
Bepect of producing such a work, Friedman nired a practs
itch and instructed ner to cast a curse on a spherica
larea, 11 inches in diameter and positioned 11 inches over the
Surface of the plinth. For another invisible work begun in the same
ear (and completed five years ister), the artist epent 1,000 hoursBt an 82.6-continetre-square piece of paper, whose blank
f after ali that invisible labour, remains vietbly unalteres.
B for 11 x 22 x .005, Priedman assiduously erased = Playboy
leentrefold, reducing it to a blank and slightly creased
Blossy paper. In revisiting Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning
p the artist pointedly targeted not at an artwork but a mass
image designed to solicit and exploit voyeuristic impulses
ing designed to be stared at, in other words, which he has
W@ invisible vith a repetitive sotion that in light of the
fal, Suggests 4 kind of a1l-consuming masturbation
lke Jakob'c, thece vorks drax attention to the way that our
jpetation and experience of an artwork 1s often contingent
formation that exists apart from the object itself. They also
Questions about the relative importance of veracity. We cannot
really know whether Priedaan did, in fact, stare at that
fof paper for 1,000 hours, but perhaps that very uncertainty
Key elenent of our experience of this kind of art. Since we
fE definitively disprove any of the artist’s claims, issues of
hor belief may be beside the point: the speculative idea alone,
fPdless of its verifisbility, seems to offer all the purchase
we require.
Fone instances, the use of invisible media accommodates an
sneely personal and private form of artistic practice. In 1995
Dong began a daily routine of writing diary entries witn water
i& stone tablet, s ritual he has documented with photographs ever
jee. Aso child ina family of modest means, he had been taught
bie father to practice calligraphy in this way, to save paper
Ank. Over the years, his Invisible diary writing has become
Meditative means of expressing his feelings and thoughts in
jal privacy, without leaving any legible record. At the same time,
Reflects the ephemeral nature of much of the work associated
ith the ‘Apartment Art’ movement that emerged in China in the
0s, at a time when artiste nad limited material resources and
gnibition opportunities
Other artists have explored the Invisible while addressing
lsrec-scale political and social scenarios. As if repurposing
jodert Barry's Telepathic Piece (1969) a8 a form of social protest,
Hann Motti organised a public performance in Bogoté, Coluabia, in 1992
in which he attempted to telepathically eommunicate a message urging
iene country's unpopular president to resign. Entitled Nada por 1a
Fuerza, Everything through the Power of the Mind, Motti’s invisible
IRessece was docunented only through dts coverage by Colombian
Inewspapers. Tereea Margolles, a8 part of her ongoing attexpts to
lconnenorate and dra attention to the epldente of civil violence
Hin Mexico, caused in large part by drug cartels and the climate
lof political corruption they have instigated, has created severalfilations in wnich otherwise empty rooms are humidified with
that has been used to wash bodies in a Nexieo City morgue.
fing visual forms of representing the victims of violence,
flies instead crestes a mich wore intimate experience of human
By s8 visitors feel the moist air on their skin and mentally
fre their connection to the absent bodies of the dead.
whose work has often eritically scanned American
history and identity, obliquely comments on the repre-
ation of race in He tells we Tam His Own (2005), a Cibachrone
iE that resembles s piece of Blank photographic paper. With its
fle borrowed fron the popular 1912 hymn, In the Garden, which
ides a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, Ligon's picture
HMhiteness calls to mind the way thet the divine presence is
pently represented in movies, a8 well ae in Christian theatre
@ blinding light. He tells me 1 am His Own quietly prompts us
Peflect on how such conventions are never neutral, but express
reinforce the biases of the (white) culture that produces then
jan Ondak's More Silent Than Ever (2006), addresses anotner
yressive social landscape: the pervasive culture of surveillance
it existed under the former Gonnunist regimes in Eastern Europe.
jak’s installation consists only of an empty room with « single
jpance and exit, and a wall label indicating the presence of a
jeealed listening device. Wnetner or not we choose to take this
Bit st face value, we sre led to at least consider the possibility of
fPvetiiance, and 11 1s precisely this diffuse state of uncertainty,
feher than full-blown paranoia, that effectively recalls the
faosphere of doubt that infects everyday situations in societies
IRE spy on their own citizer
T hope it is clear by now that there 1s no Limit to the potential
genings constructed around invisibility in art. Works that seea-
fpgly share similar blankness turn out to conjure and convey
jmarkably varied content. An empty room or unoeoupied plinth can
jecessively operate as a sign of mystical sensibility, a haunting
sence, or s cursed presence. The difference does not have to do
ith the inherent characteristice of the object — something that
invisible art makes obvious — but with how 4t 4s positioned witnin,
larger symbolic network. Invistble art thus helps us to grasp
pe clearly the acute contingency of art's meaning (and 1t 1s worth
jot ing in this regard that before we ean ‘see” an invisible work, 1
lust Tirst be framed as such by one means or another).
Rather than merely comprising a conceptual end game or a rhetorica!
prank designed to flout the expectations of gallery visitors
ipvisibie works of art nave played a oritioal role in expanding
he limits of contemporary art over the past half century, while
BBalling into question how such limits are maintained and function
En presenting paintings, sculptures and photographs that cannot be
Been, artists have asked us to think differently about what engagingOf art entails. clearly, tt 18 not just about looking at
Art 1s about paying attention, and invisible art asks us
ffention in a different way. It invites us to forego ‘tne
fey of seeing’, to borrow Leonie von Oppenneia's phrase,
Stead observe the ways in which our perception, far from
Gated, 1s shaped by various Kinds of fiiters, Including
fUmptions snd assumptions, our cultural conditioning ani
History, and the institutional structures, both physical
ierial, that ehape our relationship vo art.
Jeiprocess, this kind of work leads us to wonder about our usual
fs for engaging with pictures and sculptures, and whether
IBiss the mark. If we tgnore any part of wnat art has to
iS, we effectively render tt invisible, With our ceaseless
round of international art fairs and the headline-grabbing
le of auction nouses selling works for mind-boggling sums,
Rot already rendered invisible « great deal of contenpo
frt? Or consider the vay that museum bulldings are now often
fed as architectural showpieces that attract more sttention
IS artworks they nouse. Under these conditions, art disappears
BRere backdrop for flamboyant displays of eocial capital. In
context the ides of invisible art can be # much-needed tonte.
provoke us to eee through the art world’s extravagance and
fe, and to remind us that the meaning of art 1s not framed by
fea objects, but develops through our responses to a given work,
feelings and tnougnts and all that we make of them. Whether
fie or not, art ultinately cones to life tn our menories and in
onversations with others, where it activates and 1lluatnates
bless other cultural references. That tnvisible process 1s the
lity of art, to which we may draw closer through engaging 1
f like those in this exhibition.ges exnivivion at Indica Gallery, London
fon Boke, |
ber 2967, 0.22
quotes
f pass
eens sum, January/February, 1994.
uary 1969, 9.22
Br sacrys rotepatnte Pisce appeared tn the catalogue for en untttin
My reprinted tn tucy Lippard (ed), S1x Years: The Denatertetisats
object from 1966
Bit sccording to the gallery's bene, ne fees path of Braet
fF tine vutlatng, and “Sout
19 austay Netager