“It is a nervous time, and artists respond to that.”
Unmonumental was published in conjunction with the inaugural exhibition of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, that fancypants, $50 million, are-you-smart-enough, stacked-tower-of-whiteshoeboxes in NYC. “While we now have a beautiful new building, we are also keenly aware of not becoming too proper, polite, or institutional. On the contrary, we must continue to fearlessly confront challenging art.”
And by challenging, art director Lisa Phillips refers to art made out of glued-together crap and the occasional touch of fluorescent lighting. This kind of crap-art is ubiquitous today, and Unmonumental’s curators have their finger firmly on garbage sculpture’s pulse. The book presents a tidy collection of sculptors who have somehow wined, dined, hacked, glued, and finger-fucked their intentionally inadequate and skimpy works into a monstrously lavish museum exhibition, making their collective works monstrous and lavish by association.
Some heady references to Manichean maladies (let me save you the tab over to Wikipedia, “manichean: a dualistic religion”) and inane theories on Mel Gibson’s effect on us neither point to nor dodge the motivation behind this show. Instead, they illuminate the confusion, lack of leadership, and desperate need for purpose that these sculptors demonstrate.
– Chris Force
Huffy Howler, Rachel Harrison, mixed media, 84″ x 84″ x 30″, 2004
Untitled, Urs Fisher, steel, concrete, screws, hair, glue, plastic, burlap, wood, chicken wire, 76″ x 96″ x 64″, 2003
Cánon enigmático a 108 voces, Abraham Cruzvillegas, buoys, fine and steel wire, synthetic and natural fibers, dimensions variable, 2005
Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century
Richard Flood, Laura Hoptman, Massimiliano Gioni, Trevor Smith
Hardcover, 160 Pages, $69.95, Phaidon