For our upcoming exhibition on artist residencies, Rirkrit Tiravanija will reconstruct a stage designed in the 1920s by Viennese architect/theatrical designer Friedrich Kiesler (1890-1965). The Raumbühne, or “space-stage,” was a physical manifestation of “corrrealism,” Kiesler’s theory of “the endless and multidimensional correlation between the human being, the arts and the space.” A temporary, circular, two-story stage, the structure continues Tiravanija’s experiments with and homages to modernist architecture, which have included a chrome recreation of R. M. Schindler’s house in West Hollywood.
But it also fits Tiravanija’s mode of art: he creates situations and structures where people can interact, so that the actual art is not an object at all, but the animation of the space. Thanks to early projects where he cooked curry and pad Thai (the national dish of his native Thailand) in galleries, his art has been labeled “relational aesthetics” (judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations they spark) or Joseph Beuys’ notion of “social sculpture.”
It’s also an apt symbol for an exhibition which aims to bring together artists in various disciplines (among past Walker artists in residence, it will highlight choreographer Ralph Lemon and filmmaker Spencer Nakasako, who will visit to participate in public activities) and audiences who can activate the galleries themselves. Stay tuned for a range of in-gallery talks and events “curated” by local artists as well as Tiravanija, Lemon, and Nakasako.
More: The Brooklyn Rail runs an excellent interview with Tiravanija from 2004.
Kiki Smith
Blue Girl (detail), 1998
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
Photo: Ellen Page Wilson
© Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith’s art runs the gamut of themes, from mythology and folklore to feminism, science, and the natural world. But in an interview with Art 21, it’s her discussion of the religion of her childhood that most grabs me, and not just because, like Smith, I was raised Catholic. I’ve long pondered the row of churches across the street from the Walker, and the “mysteries” that both art and religion ponder. And I’ve thought about how the object orientation of Catholicism had distinct parallels with the charged objects we show in the galleries (lining up in elementary school to kiss the bloody feet of a crucified ceramic Jesus during Lent seemed to suggest that the object isn’t what matters, just as a canvas slashed by Italian artist Lucio Fontanta is about the action as much as the embodiment). Smith (who visits the Walker on February 26 to open Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005) sums this idea up well:
It's one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world, that it's through the physical world that you have spiritual life, that you have to be here physically in a body. You have all this interaction with objects, with rosaries and medals. It believes in the physical world. It's a 'thing' culture.
It's also about storytelling in that sense, about reiterating over and over and over again these mythological stories about saints and other deities that can come and intervene for you on your behalf. All the saints have attributes that are attached to them and you recognize them through their iconography. And it's about transcendence and transmigration, something moving always from one state to another. And art is in a sense like a proof: it's something that moves from your insides into the physical world, and at the same time it's just a representation of your insides. It doesn't rob you of your insides and it's always different, but in a different form from your spirit.
Read the entire interview. Kiki Smith: A Gathering, organized by the Walker, is on view at SFMOMA through January 29.
Also: An interview with Smith by Carlo McCormick.
