Where does it end?

My contribution to this show is a site-specific installation I've titled Snow Cave. In keeping with the ideas of the show it is both literally and metaphorically an ephemeral piece: a delicate "shelter" built out of wire, dotted lines and shadows. As with my previous installations this past year, it will exist only for the duration of the show, a particularly short lifespan in this case. In common with previous works too, the piece takes its shape in response to the conditions and constraints of the exhibition space. This space, a classroom in the basement of FCMOCA, has some eccentricities (i.e., the corner I'm using butts up against a kitchen counter)- but I like eccentricities. Encountering awkward arrangements forces problem solving, and this spurs novel approaches in my art making. There's some give-and-take: I'll take the cabinetry hardware off to make the structure more neutral, but I find myself delighting in the way the cast shadows from my piece wrap around the face of the kitchen cabinets.

Although it's always a factor, I think this piece in particular foregrounds the dependence of my work upon found spaces. Of my several installation spaces, it's the least like a conventional exhibit space. I think it raises hitherto neglected questions about where my piece ends and where the architecture of the exhibition space starts. In this instance, I like the boxy shape of the cabinets and the rectangular niche where a window used to be- and I've utilized (or appropriated?) both. If I had to recreate the piece, I would want to recreate those elements.

Where does the work of art end and the rest of the world begin? The curators of Object/ No Object raise the question implicitly by crafting and creatively orchestrating an exhibition that has it's own virtual existence, and which can grow by accruing participation. In a very real sense the exhibition is the work of art, and its borders are yet undefined. Around the time I initially became involved in this project, I was just finishing reading Arthur Danto's The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. There's an anecdote the author tells about a bronze cat statue, which I think is terrific (and applicable):

There is at Columbia University's Arden House Conference Center a statue of a cat in bronze. It stands on a floor at the head of a stairway that leads into a common room at a lower level. Presumably it is of some value, or believed to be... inasmuch as the managers have chained it to the railing- to forestall theft, I suppose, as if it were a television set in a squalid motel. Such might be the obvious interpretation. But I am open to the suggestion that it is not a chained sculpture of a cat but a sculpture of a chained cat, one end of which is wittily attached to a piece of reality.... Of course what we take to be a bit of reality can in fact be part of the work, which is now a sculpture of a cat-chained-to-an-iron-railing, though the moment we allow it to be a part of the work, where does or can the work end? It becomes a kind of metaphysical sandpit, swallowing the universe down into itself.

Prepping the Space:

On Friday November 12th the participants in FRCC's Museum & Gallery Studies program began prepped the area in which we've been meeting; this same space will become our exhibition gallery at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art on December 3, 2010.

Today artist Sarah Vaeth began her installation and we invite our audience to visit our Facebook page to see how this work progresses over the next few weeks.

Sarah Vaeth Begins: 
 

Gridding Off The Wall

Mapping Out the Design

Materials

Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art

The Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art  is hosting our exhibit First Friday from 12 noon- 9pm
December 3, 2010.

FCMoCA is located in Old Town Fort Collins at 201 South College Avenue.

Statements from A Curator:

My Curatorial Statement: 

 “The wonder of it all is that what looked for all the world like a diminishing horizon - the art-object's becoming so ephemeral as to threaten to disappear altogether - has, like some marvelous philosophical riddle, turned itself inside out to reveal its opposite. What appeared to be a question of object/non-object has turned out to be a question of seeing and not seeing, of how it is we actually perceive or fail to perceive "things" in their real contexts. Now we are presented and challenged with the infinite, everyday richness... which seeks to discover and value the potential for experiencing beauty in everything.”

~ Epilogue from: Being and Circumstance, Notes Toward a Conditional Art by Robert Irwin, The Lapis Press, Larkspur Landing, CA.

The fourth annual Front Range Museum/Gallery Studies exhibit entitled Object, No Object; Sculpture of Ideas aims to explore the evolving definition of sculpture through the use of objects, conceptual ideas and social media. The exhibit aims to challenge preconceived notions of sculpture through concurrent on-line and site/time specific installations but also hopefully facilitates a public dialogue about the very nature of contemporary art, it's direction, and the commentary it makes on a digitally enhanced, hyper-modern society.

Personal Note:

I am only one of four curators associated with the Object, No Object; Sculpture of Ideas exhibit. However this blog serves as both my individual project meant to explore the context in which each artist works but also as a means for the audience to become more engaged in the process of putting together an installation of this kind. 

To see the additional curatorial statements please click here!