We did some further research into artist who share similar practices in relation to relational aesthetics. In doing this we came across the art exhibition in the Guggenheim called ‘theanyspacewhatever 2008-2009′ where 10 artists worked together to create a collective experience, all having different expertise.
theanyspacewhatever 2008-2009
Within this exhibition, 10 artists with common ideas on relational aesthetics created an exhibition at the Guggenheim.
‘…ten artists who share certain strategies and sensibilities: Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.’
Though each artist is recognized for his or her own practice, they are linked by a mutual rethinking of the early modernist impulse to conflate art and life. Rather than deploy representational strategies, they privilege experiential, situation-based work over discrete aesthetic objects.’
All these artists are from ‘theanyspacewhatever’:
Firmamental Night Sky: Oculus.12, 2008
‘Engaging the senses with color, light, and music, Angela Bulloch’s installations explore the effects of environmental stimuli by incorporating elements that are activated by the viewer or patterned according to digital programming.’
‘Maurizio Cattelan is known for his provocative, paradoxical sculptures and installations, which frequently invoke the artist’s own antiheroic persona. While a black sense of humor, roguish pranks, and a taste for the subversive have become hallmarks of Cattelan’s work, its foundation lies in a nuanced confrontation with the absurdity and tragedy of the human condition. Cattelan’s life-size effigy of a beloved fairytale character lying face down in the museum’s fountain reads as a crime scene replete with questions of intent: suicide, homicide, or ill-planned escape?’
theanyspacewhatever Signage System, 2008
Powder-coated, water-cut aluminum pieces
‘Liam Gillick’s work investigates the ideological underpinnings of the built environment, exposing the social, political, and economic forces that distinguish architectural spaces, and investigating how these properties construct and mediate behavior. He often exploits the potential of the exhibition format within a practice that encompasses an intricate layering of critical writing, fiction, and sculptural form, with an emphasis on modern design. For theanyspacewhatever, Gillick has intervened in the Guggenheim’s operational systems, such as directions, didactics, and seating, to subtly reorient visitors’ experiences of the exhibition itself. His series of hanging aluminum signs infiltrates the museum, deploying a characteristically spare and arresting graphic aesthetic. Appropriating the conventions of institutional signage, some of the texts playfully mimic imperative and informational language, while others reference the work of the artists participating in the show, or offer enigmatic slogans.’
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s
Sound and light environment, 9 min.
‘Gonzalez-Foerster’s light- and sound-based installation NY.2022 (2008), created in collaboration with Ari Benjamin Meyers, regularly animates the Peter B. Lewis Theater as a new iteration of an orchestral performance commissioned by the museum’s Works & Process series and presented during the opening weekend of the exhibition. The live production of NY.2022 reconceived the science fiction film Soylent Green (1973) as an abstract musical narrative about endings and departures.’
prettymucheverywordwritten,spoken,heard,overheardfrom1989
Wall texts in various fonts and sizes
‘From the beginning of his career, Douglas Gordon has used text and the spoken word to subtly intervene in existing environments. Whether whispered over the phone to unsuspecting audience members or sent via mail, his succinct but poignant missives disrupt the usual flows of communication. Dispersed virally throughout the museum’s rotunda, prettymucheverywordwritten,spoken,heard,overheardfrom1989 … is a compilation of texts that provides a veritable archive of Gordon’s written work. Encountered collectively, the texts reveal the artist’s obsession with opposites–fact and fiction, good and evil, and so on–and the ways in which they often collapse into one another.’
Revolving Hotel Room, 2008
‘Carsten Höller’s work generates unstable situations that challenge the assumptions of the viewer and explore the influence of unanticipated movement on human perception. His participation-based installations and devices—ranging from flying machines, slides, and carousels, to goggles that view the world upsidedown—induce new psychological and physiological sensations that prompt the participant to experience him or herself and the environment in a new way. Höller’s fully functioning hotel room invites visitors to spend the night in the museum’s rotunda on four slow-turning discs equipped with comfortable sleeping, dressing, and working areas. Members of the public can reserve the room for one night each and enjoy a leisurely private viewing of the entire exhibition at any point during their stay.’
theanyspacewhatever transfer book, 2008
‘Pierre Huyghe’s work plays freely with the constructs of time and reality, creating fictional narratives that draw upon and ultimately affect our empirical world. As his contribution to theanyspacewhatever, Huyghe has created a book of iron-on transfers that illustrate the Guggenheim’s exterior and interior, incorporating images of the spaces in which the artworks appear as a speculative device. This representation of a possible reality includes a number of renderings of the darkened rotunda filled with multiple beams of light, in reference to the participatory event, OPENING, that Huyghe will stage three times during the run of the exhibition. Disrupting and disorienting the temporal flow of the museum’s presentation, the performance invites visitors to roam through the space in blackout conditions, lighting their way with headlamps. In a conceptually linked project, an image by Huyghe is currently displayed on a billboard in Times Square, at 47th Street with 7th Avenue’
Marquee, Guggenheim, NY, 2008
‘Philippe Parreno considers the exhibition to be an integral element in his poetic and elusive work, which also comprises publications, lectures, and performances. His site-specific, illuminated movie marquee installed on the facade of the Guggenheim Museum functions as an enigmatic “label” for the exhibition. Rendered in white Plexiglas and neon, this ghostly sign announces the show without making any pronouncements about its content or structure, instead reflecting the open-ended nature of the exhibition.’
Jorge Pardo Sculpture Ink, 2008
‘Infusing the aesthetics of modern design with a Pop inflection, Jorge Pardo reunites form and function to create operative environments within the museum, while also bringing art into everyday life in his architecture and design projects.
Whether redesigning a restaurant, an office, or a domestic interior, his work is always characterized by finely crafted, decorative elements and an interest in the social dynamics of public and private space. For this exhibition, Pardo has transformed one of the museum’s ramps with an interlocking system of intricately-patterned cardboard screens that are illuminated by sculptural lamps. Demarcating an alternative circulation route for visitors, the installation also functions as an inventive display system for a series of silkscreened prints created by the artists in the exhibition and produced on a press in Pardo’s studio in collaboration with master printer Christian Zickler.’
A documentary film portrait
‘Rirkrit Tiravanija is best known for the meals he has cooked for visitors during his exhibitions, as well as the architectural structures he transposes to the gallery environment, in a layering of the real onto the aesthetic. True to his career-long pursuit to blend art and life, Tiravanija has created a documentary film, CHEW THE FAT, on the occasion of this exhibition. The film features extensive interviews with the artists in theanyspacewhatever as well as with other friends and colleagues, providing an intimate perspective on the art of the 1990s. The interviews–all approximately seventy—five minutes in length–are on view on dedicated monitors in the High Gallery, and in an edited-down, feature-length version screened regularly in the museum’s theaters.’
After researching and observing all the different approaches throughout this exhibition it really broadened the scope of possibilities of how we could approach this type of topic of creating a community. Ultimately was very helpful when deciding what we were going to do!
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