(These texts were written in the name of CAC Bukovje/Landskrona and speak only for us, that is to say, for Nina Slejko Blom and Conny Blom. The opinions stated here are not necessarily shared by the staff of Škuc, or the featured artists, and they do not concern the works in the exhibitions.)
Yes, we like brackets.
We also like to put on exhibitions. It is like that feeling when you were a child and thought the whole world shared your passion for toys. Without knowing any better, you insisted on sharing your amazing discoveries in toy catalogues and shop windows with every incautious adult that gave you a moment of attention when, for their sake, they should not have. They would always regret it later. We hope the same is not true for our more or less suspecting audience.
Sometimes we create exhibitions that we really wish we could force on more people. Last summer, we happened to make one like that. Very compact in format, rich in content and pleasing to the eye, we found the show was just too good to sit on our shelves after its initial birth and brief glimpses of light in Estonia. We really wanted to show it to more people, so we nagged around for different exposure venues. And lo and behold! the place we most wanted was the one to say yes. A great place with a fine history and good present, and given the recent leadership teams, we dare to hope also a fine future, put their three rooms (and a corridor) at our disposal.
Given the number of rooms, not only could we exhibit again our version of Mel Bochner’s “Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art“, we also had an opportunity to add more shows to show. The joy, the joy! We thought that a certain other historical remake would fit the setting nicely and decided to tackle Joseph Kosuth’s “Fifteen People Present Their Favorite Book.” And then, running slightly out of steam, we settled on letting Klara Sax handle the remaining space. Klara, known for being an easy artist, happy to serve and adapt to any given situation and curators’ whim, positioned her piece terrifically well alongside the other two exhibitions. Her work, named “All the Books on Baking, Bread and Matej Andraž Vogrinčič Removed from all the City Libraries of Ljubljana” concludes the trio of exhibitions quite sweetly with its bookish appearance and flirtatious references to the history of the venue and a recent exhibition that had taken place there.
In short, on display at Škuc there will be a conglomerate of three shows that stuff the premises with over 60 artists (but who counts?) while making sure that both the art and exhibitions look really good. These shows are intended to provide a discourse on curating in the form of an investigation of the borders between curatorial and artistic practices, and that of authorship.
Look, look, look – how about this one, and this? Isn’t it fantastic?! But look here! And here!! And come, come, look at this one! And this one has all these blinking lights and it makes sounds if you press and…
Nina Slejko Blom & Conny Blom
P.S.
Some people might notice that the gallery in question has five rooms, in fact.
Or perhaps four and a corridor. Or maybe a lobby and four rooms. Or else a lobby, a small staircase, two rooms and a corridor.
Feel free to think what you like. We have always thought of the gallery as one with three rooms and a corridor, and we are the curators: ergo we say, therefore it is.
(Our opinions on which of the rooms we perceive as a corridor vary, but we find that unimportant. The important thing about both these corridors is that they are rather lovely and can make for pretty decent rooms.)
Fifteen People Present Their Favorite Book (after Kosuth)
CAC Bukovje/Landskrona is proud to present an exhibition inspired by Joseph Kosuth’s project “Fifteen People Present Their Favorite Book”, originally executed in New York in 1967.
Participants:
John Baldessari (artist, b. 1931 in U.S.), Janet Cardiff (artist, b. 1957 in Canada), Yara Flores (artist, b. 1960 in Brazil), Liam Gillick (artist, b. 1964 in UK), Rodney Graham (artist, b. 1949 in Canada), Susan Hiller (artist, b. 1940 U.S.), Joseph Kosuth (artist, b. 1945 in U.S.), Jernej Lorenci (theatre director, b. 1973 in Slovenia), Sarah Lucas (artist, b. 1962 in U.K.), Jonathan Monk (artist, b. in 1969 U.K.), Vanessa Place (writer/artist, b. 1968 in U.S. ) Ugo Rondinone (artist, b. in 1964 Switzerland), Klara Sax (artist, b. 1997 in U.S.), Gillian Wearing (artist, b. 1963 in U.K.), Ruben Östlund (film director, b. 1974 in Sweden)
When Joseph Kosuth first executed “Fifteen People Present Their Favorite Book” in 1967, the project toyed with the concepts of the authorship of the works and the exhibition, and aspects of what defines an ‘artist’ and an ‘artwork’. Our show explores these same issues and is something of a homage to the original exhibition, but we are also using it as a vehicle for our own excitement; there is hardly a better way to get reading tips. Having said that, we are in fact a very serious couple of artists/curators, and this is a very serious exhibition, which we are handling with the utmost care, as we always do. Also, as is always the case with CAC Bukovje/Landskrona, we asked for the participation only of those people whose work we really like.
Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art (after Bochner)
CAC Bukovje/Landskrona is proud to present again an exhibition inspired by Mel Bochner’s project “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art”, originally executed in New York in 1966.
Participating artists:
Bengt Adlers (1950, Sweden), Conny Blom (1974, Sweden), Mel Bochner (1940, U.S.), Kalle Brolin (1968, Sweden), Vasja Cenčič (1973, Slovenia), Martin Creed (1968, U.K.), Kajsa Dahlberg (1973, Sweden), Jeremy Deller (1966, UK), Ditte Ejlerskov (1982, Denmark), Milanka Fabjančič (1982, Slovenia), Vadim Fishkin (1965, USSR), Johan Furåker (1978, Sweden), Alexander Gutke (1971, Sweden), Felix Gmelin (1962, Germany), Carl Michael von Hausswolff (1956, Sweden), Ištvan Išt Huzjan (1981 in Slovenia), IRWIN (1983, Slovenia), Janez Janša (1973, Slovenia), Janez Janša (1964, Croatia) and Janez Janša (1970, Italy), Stine Marie Jacobsen (1977, Denmark), Lisa Jeannin (1972, Sweden), Žiga Kariž (1973, Slovenia), Clay Ketter (1961, U.S.), Jukka Korkeila (1968, Finland), Anna Ling (1971, Sweden), Anna Lundh (1979, Sweden), Miltos Manetas (1964, Greece), Jonathan Meese (1970, Japan), Kristina Müntzing (1973, Sweden), Jesper Norda (1972, Sweden), Björn Perborg (1974, Sweden), Magnus Petersson (1971, Sweden), Adrian Piper (1948, US), Klara Sax (1997, U.S.), Lina Selander (1973, Sweden), Nataša Skušek (1967, Slovenia), Nina Slejko Blom (1982, Slovenia), Nedko Solakov (1957, Bulgaria), Mladen Stropnik (1977, Slovenia), Annika Ström (1964, Sweden), Stefanos Tsivopoulos (1973, Greece), Ulla West (1954, Sweden), Leon Zuodar (1977, Slovenia) and Serkan Özkaya (1973, Turkey).
In 1966, Mel Bochner collected drawings, sketches and similar material from friends and colleagues for an exhibition he intended to mount at the Visual Arts Gallery at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He had first intended to frame the material, but when informed that the exhibition budget did not allow for such extravagance, he resorted to photo-copying all the material in four editions and mounting it in four identical binders that he placed on four podiums in the gallery. Bochner used a Xerox machine, because it was the most readily available tool for quick and affordable reproduction. The equivalent today would be a color digital printer. By using one, we lost that “Xerox sameness filtering” of the material, but we were not trying to technically reproduce the 1966 show; we just took a smart idea that deserves attention and tailored it to our purposes. In their essence, the ideas for our shows are very similar, if in a way also diametric – Bochner used Xerox and folders when faced with a shortage of money to present the works he wanted to show, and we used a printer and folders when wanting to curate a show without a budget. The main differences are in that the artists we invited to participate knew beforehand that they would be creating for the folder, and that the material submitted would not be altered much in the reproduction process. In terms of content, our goal with this exhibition when it was first created was to bring as much good art as possible to a small, culturally undernourished city in southeast Estonia. So perhaps we were not doing this seminal curatorial piece justice, as we were not exactly ground breaking; showing art reproduced in folders on plinths has been done before, and our group of artists was not particularly revolutionary. Also, as curatorial endeavors go, constructing solemnly on the basis of a love for art, of enjoying it and showing it, seems like a rather naive and ‘mundane’ concept. However, it does feel at times that a loudly proclaimed passion for art is extremely radical and rare in curating today, so maybe we are not so far off.
All the Books on Baking, Bread and Matej Andraž Vogrinčič Removed from all the City Libraries of Ljubljana
Klara Sax
(The exhibition was made possible with support from Kulturkontakt Nord, the Swedish Embassy in Tallinn, Landskrona Stad, Agrippa Manufacturing AB and Esselte Sverige AB.)
photo © Dejan Habicht