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Last week I attended David Joselit’slecture at NYU entitled “Against Meaning,” the Gelitin exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery and Jeffrey Valance at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

Background to Joselit lecture:
Information is networked, the hierarchical system consists of nodes that are interconnected. Removal of one node will lead to regeneration of connections in other parts of the network. (ex: Al-Qaeda terrorist network, MasterCard database, google database). The networks are enmeshed to such an extent  that recent cyberattacks on Google allegedly conducted from China pose a National Security threat to the U.S.

Joselit began the lecture with the ways value is attributed to art.

Value=scarcity

Joselit used the example of a Picasso painting, the one of a kind, the object.
In his exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Jeffrey Valance created latrines for kitsch objects such as Tiki Soap-an-a-rope, pasties from a Las Vegas dancer, boxer briefs, etc. Each object is accompanied by a two paragraph narrative description of the artist’s relationship to the object. Unlike Duchamp’s readymades, Valance uses the sculptural container and text to apply sentimental value to the mass produced object.

Jeffrey Vallance Coral in the Shape of Tiki 2007 Mixed media 9 1/2 x 6 3/8 x 3 3/4 inches 24.1 x 16.2 x 9.5 cm

Installed throughout the gallery’s main space, Vallance’s ‘Relics and Reliquaries,’ are sculptures that irreverently sanctify seemingly banal objects of personal significance to the artist in small intricately crafted cabinets that recall traditional Catholic reliquaries. A single broken Christmas light is lovingly enshrined in a small box crowned with a cross; a ’soap-on-a-rope’ in the shape of the Polynesian God Tiki reclines in an intricately carved vessel lined with velvet. Each reliquary is installed with a corresponding plaque that gives the reason and context for its importance to Vallance.

However, art is not scarce. (i.e. the size and number of international art fairs, artists who use mass production such as Warhol and Sherrie Levine)

The artist is scarce –
When the art object is easily mass produced, the artist “process” becomes the scarcity. The artist is valued as a service worker. This occurs when the artist is invited to make “site-specific” work.

(This is not a real HSBC advertisement, but refers to an inside joke between a friend and me explained below.)

I attended the Gelitin show at Greene Naftali. The Austrian installation artists were blind-folded and building a sculpture in the space. Audiences were invited to watch the artists throughout the process and witness the construction. The blind-folding element was brilliant. Not because it raises the audience’s suspense for their personal safety like many of Gelitin’s haphazard constructions (normally insurance waivers must to be signed before entering). Instead, the blindfolds objectify the artists as service providers, or site-specific art-workers. The blindfolds prevent the artists from interacting directly with the audience, they can not see what they are doing nor anyone in the room. In addition, they are dressed in lingerie and stilettos, a facet that insures the gaze of the audience is directed to them as objects and not the art object they are creating.

The inside HSBC ad joke being that my friend thought the actual sculpture they were making was “old fashioned.” An apt point.

Information=Information

Dan Graham, Figurative, 1965

Value=Meaning
David Joselit  introduced the concept of data in conceptual art with the slide above of Dan Graham’s magazine advertisement entitled “Figurative” from 1965. The numbers represent a found receipt and the placement was determined by the editorial. The data on the page is only data, but in its juxtaposition between a Warner bra ad and a Tampax ad suggests many other readings (masculine vs. feminine.) The title leaves this open as well.

From this work, Joselit went to the idea that information changes from state to state and meaning moves with the object. Examples in contemporary art:

• Appropriation (LHOOQ, Duchamp’s appropriation of Mona Lisa)
• Reenactment (Marina Aabramovic’s  reenactments “Seven Easy Pieces”)
• Avatar (Pierre Huyghe’s No ghost just a shell)
• Platform (Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Pavilions, relational aesthetics)
• Workshops
• Form defined by the program, profile, silhouette (Rem Koolhaas, OMA)

To be continued after next Joselit installment Feb. 16.