May.28.2004 - THE DETROITER

When the Audience Becomes the Art:

Detroit Biennale 2004

By Christina Hill

special to The Detroiter 

Run (don’t walk) to Pontiac’s recently relocated Museum of New Art (MONA) to catch the work of internationally renowned photographer, Jan de Groot. And behind every great man, there is . . . another great man, in this case museum founder, Jef Bourgeau. 

Bourgeau is the indefatigable force behind this venue dedicated to exhibiting cutting-edge art from around the world. He is also an intelligent conceptual artist who has devised the conceit that underlies this show: nothing is what it seems; beware the cult of art stars; original art is a thing of the past; embrace modern technology; the viewer is as important as the art object; question authority; embrace expedience.

 

 
So, hold your breath and just run with it. You are on your own, because you won’t learn the plot here. Suffice it to say Bourgeau’s philosophy is this: “The museum visitor becomes the creative individual . . . involved from the artist’s first stroke to that final gesture as audience. And only by erasing these lines can a contemporary museum reveal. . . the ability of art to create without boundaries.”

Ignore, then, the great-grandmotherly boundaries of the multitude of small oval frames restraining “portraits” of many of the biggest names in contemporary art. And also the tape that artfully binds pieces of some photos together. (And especially ignore that man behind the curtain.)

Concentrate, instead, on the formal elements of the digital photographs: strong color, blurry hallucinogenic effects, odd cropping. Or involve yourself with psychological elements: artists who confront; artists who hide; artists who play with props; artists who wear weird costumes; artists who make funny faces; artists with eyes shut; artists with piercing gazes; artists with backs turned; artists reaching out. It is a wonderfully provocative and diverse group. It is also intriguing to follow the trail of the exhibit as it meanders through many small galleries on two different levels in what was once a concert space.

In many ways, you find yourself in a funhouse. What is reality? Too, the experience could be likened to visiting a vertical shopping mall: get on the escalator on the bottom floor and continue going up. On any level you choose, on every level you choose, get off and find something that interests you. Engage yourself. There is amusement to be had on every figurative level: the material, the formal, the theoretical, the performative. While there is a Duchampian attitude at work here -- there is no “real” art on display, nor any inherent value in the pieces themselves, so distance is built into the work -- it is the viewer’s experience that counts as the authentic work of art.
 

 
In addition, note for your artistic education the inclusion in the mix of e-mailed pieces by the artists portrayed. There is a blurry but powerful study of (heterosexual?) anal intercourse by Thomas Ruff that has curious folds in the paper like an unfurled map. A sleeping male nude by Sam Taylor-Wood is as elegant as a figure reclining in perpetuity on top of a Medieval stone sarcophagus. Sarah Jones is represented by a woman with flowing, reddish hair lying in a tree, the natural details as precious as those in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, the mood decidedly Symbolist, or the plastic equivalent of an emotion. Maurizio Cattelan’s disturbing images of the Pope and Hitler are included, as well as Takashi Murakami’s vivid graphics derived from popular culture. A portrait by Rinke Dijkstra (none of these pieces are titled in the wall labels) is an unnervingly unromanticized look at a very new mother: her newborn, still red and wrinkled, struggles awkwardly at her breast, while she courageously stands mostly naked before us, her tummy bloated from her pregnancy, a sanitary napkin in place to catch blood still flowing.

If none of the above is to your liking, though that seems impossible, there are videos to experience, such as “24 Hour Psycho,” an extremely slowed-down version of the original, or “Vortex,” in which people whose heads are covered with sticky-side-out tape twirl about and end up stuck to each other. What could be more fun to watch than that!