I am Making Art

Performance art has emerged as one of the most significant developments in postwar Western art. ‘I am Making Art’ explores this medium, tracing the connections between the Gallery’s holdings of Fluxus and conceptual art, and contemporary work from Europe, Asia and the United States. With equal measures of absurdity and humour, the works examine idiosyncratic languages of the body and human movement, captured through photography, text and video.

Some artists push art beyond the walls of the gallery into everyday life. Others emphasise the performance of the audience in the very act of looking at art. The exhibition includes works by John Baldessari (USA), Andrea Fraser (USA), Aernout Mik (The Netherlands), Nam June Paik (Korea/USA), Song Dong (China) and Erwin Wurm (Austria).

Andrea Fraser’s video Little Frank and his carp 2001 is a recent acquisition, shown for the first time in ‘I am Making Art’. Since the mid 1980s Fraser’s performance work has presented a humorous yet sharp critique of art institutions. In Little Frank . . . hidden cameras depict the artist in the foyer of the Guggenheim Bilbao (designed by architect Frank Gehry) as she listens intently to the official audio tour that also forms the soundtrack for the video.

Responding to the suggestive language of the tour, Fraser comically follows the instructions which seem to call for a rapturous and sensual relationship with the famous museum building. Satirical and provocative, the work reflects on the potential for the architecture of museums to overpower the art works and ideas that they contain.

Pressetext

I am Making Art

mit John Baldessari, Andrea Fraser, Aernout Mik, Nam June Paik, Song Dong, Erwin Wurm