Kresge Prize Exhibition short

		December 14, 2008 ALMOST FAMOUS: a shortlist exhibition Detroit's Kresge Prize Finalists Go Down for the Count by Richard Krug for The Sunday Times Supplement courtesy Wallace Ford DETROIT - The very first Kresge Prize exhibition looks like a dud. The six shortlisted artists on view at Detroit’s Museum of New Art (MONA) struck me as unusually similar. Normally such outings try to create some variety or change of pace if only because the exhibition that accompanies any prize is made livelier when there is a good mix of painting and sculpture as well as film, photography and installation art in it. That means that this first shortlist, titled Almost Famous, focuses on one kind of art-making in Detroit to the exclusion of all others. And that would be painting. But are these even paintings? An odd decision was made before the Kresge jurors even met: to make the work more palatable for this conservative art town, nearly all of this exhibit’s work has been digitally captured and transferred onto canvas, no matter what its original medium – all stretched, varnished and presented as rather traditional paintings. Any concept art has been forcibly shunned here, unlike London’s Turner Prize which champions it to a fault. Oddly though the Kresge Prize, with its absurdly restrictive presentation, calls into question all our current understanding of what constitutes contemporary art. Something the Turner has attempted since 1991, most often to shallow effect. An object reduced only to an art context – Is IT STILL ART? By displaying all the entries as “art”, by exhibiting everything as “paintings”, the Detroit work is stripped of either the sensational or the difficult, and straight-jacketed from using arty gimmicks or hey look-at-me grandstanding. This forced gambit does uncomplicate the chaotic flux of contemporary art and trends, but at the same time casts an eerie quality over the entire exhibition. ALMOST FAMOUS stands more like a crime scene recreation, with sketch artist renditions of the real thing. Mostly photography based, of mainly realistic scenes, deceptively nonchalant in composition and subject matter – but by way of its “pure” presentation is emptied of implicit meaning or edge. Harnessed to the most traditional medium of all, the exhibit has unintentionally freed itself to become art that no longer depends on the obscure reference to be understood. What’s left you might ask. Altogether, it creates the kind of contemporary art spectacle you don't usually get anymore: room after room of miscellaneous paintings, everything very cleanly shown, and with clear space around it. The display is unobtrusive, though not exactly rousing. The works appear like a succession of solid trophies, each one asking above all to be noticed. A woman perched on the toilet is vying with a man gunned down in a street – both works having once hoped to land the Kresge Prize, now the world’s largest arts award by ten. DOWN FOR THE COUNT These first contenders are not "trying to be sensationalists," Cesar Marzetti answered, as to whether he viewed this exhibit as Detroit’s own version of the notorious Sensation show that a decade ago thrust so many young British artists onto the world stage. "Detroit artists are just trying to deal with the issues of the 21st century." Yet to put all the stress on a failed shortlist, as this show does, is strange. Although the main objective of the Kresge Prize isn't to foster talent through reward, the competitive aspect still becomes an enormous public lure. Obviously one the Museum of New Art could not resist to exploit by mounting this show. And so too, certainly, the Kresge Prize itself will be judged in coming years as an instrument of publicity: for the nominees, for contemporary art, and for the sponsor. Indeed, the prize has the potential to lift Detroit's contemporary art scene onto an entirely new publicity plane. TIGHT SECURITY "Complete impartiality was the target set for distinguishing the shortlist from the final winner,” one juror confided anonymously. To securely maintain the prize's impartiality, jurors were required not to have viewed nor have any personal knowledge of the nominees' work over the past five years; nor, were they allowed to either speak with, interview or visit the artists nor their studios. All decisions were made from a simple viewing of twenty digital slides from each artist. In the end, everyone is happy when these decisions are made solidly safe and meet community standards everywhere: the caveat being that the final choice can be exhibited anywhere in the world without causing a ripple of controversy. THE PRIZE FIGHT When the Turner prize was established in 1984 it had no age restrictions. At this point, neither does the Kresge. There will always be compromise voting and favoritism in the process, but the greatest fear to many artists is that the Kresge Prize will become a lifetime achievement award of some kind; while the eighteen smaller but still-handsome "fellowships" given later in the year will address only the untried young. According to Marzetti, "If the Kresge Prize simply becomes a star search for the safe, the old and the established - it will totally cripple its ability to be the benchmark that distinguishes Detroit artists. If it sets out to be Detroit's Nobel Prize for Art, all the top people will be used up in the first five years. It wildly overshoots, and the overwhelming majority of Detroit's best will be rendered ineligible." But has such a purpose even been defined yet? "The Kresge Prize remains open to any artist who meets the proposed qualifications," Marzetti emphasized, slamming one hand on the table, "and that is to recognize artistic innovation and to reward integrity, depth of vision and singularity of purpose. And for now, at any age and at any point in one's career. "This prize shouldn't set out to be a career-ender, but to acclaim an artist at the height of his abilities. Not to attempt to decide Detroit's greatest living artist, but its most outstanding to date. It should be a moment-in-time celebrated, not a time capsule to be buried at night in the city square." When London's Turner Prize briefly dropped their shortlist exhibition in 1988, critics and public alike hated being deprived of the opportunity to compare works, to approve or disapprove of the selections, and the fun of trying to predict who would – or wouldn't – win. In 1991 the Turner shortlist, and exhibition of work by shortlisted artists, was reinstated. In Detroit there are many who argue that a similar competition is the best way to attract widespread interest, but that the Kresge administrators are half-hearted about attracting media coverage. Such a competition would possibly achieve the impossible here: establishing a Detroit contemporary art event as something of national concern and importance. Jef Bourgeau, director of the Museum of New Art, holds a slightly different view: "The whole idea of a race and a winner is demeaning to art. I also have particular concerns about the shortlist, since all but one would be seen as losers in a race they hadn't chosen to enter. There is also uncertainty at this early point as to what the Prize is actually for: is it to acknowledge the work of Detroit's most reputable senior artists? Or should it highlight younger but transformative talent? And if you have both types of artist on one shortlist, how do you possibly decide between them?" Having said that, Bourgeau explained why he eventually agreed to this exhibition: "The shortlisted artists for this prize were told that they should feel honored just to be nominated. I see Almost Famous as giving the shortlisted some small acclamation for their commitment to Detroit and their laudable contributions to its culture. "And for the general public, such a notable award should be more than a mere announcement. It should allow us all the occasion to see some of the best art being honored in Detroit. Detroiters need to come to know their artists, young and old, untried or true. And I firmly believe the Kresge Prize and its fellowships will be a first step at correcting this lapse." With such little fanfare raised during this first selection, there is small hope. And, for some, that means the Kresge Prize has failed its larger purpose: that Detroit art will be discussed in a way it hasn't been for decades. Two for the price of one Cesar Marzetti, the museum’s curator, has written two versions of the same essay for the catalogue: one for those over 50 years old, and one for those younger. When cornered about simply recycling an old essay he'd written a few years ago, Marzetti responded angrily: “All of modern art is recycled. Since the beginning of the 20^th century. Artists cannibalize each other and regurgitate. After 100 years the same spew tends to get thinner yet more seductive at the same time.” “Our audience,” he explained, pulling his gray-tinged hair back into a ponytail, “they are of two distinct groups. One is the young academically avant-garde. Academic because for them art is made not to communicate but to be explained. The other is the old school. Those who take it all at face-value, simple technique and vision. One is hip, one is not. And my intention with one essay for both, was to address each in a language that they are familiar. While maintaining the integrity of the overall essay and my own reputation among both camps.”

		ALMOST FAMOUS: a shortlist exhibition -- will open Saturday, December 20th at the Museum of New Art (MONA), and will close January 17th, 2009. A reception will also be held on Saturday, December 20th - from 6pm until 9pm. The Museum of New Art is located at 7 North Saginaw Street, Pontiac.
		The Shortlist:
		Clara Beckmann - is the grand-niece of German painter Max Beckmann. She was born outside London in 1978, and has recently served a residency at Detroit’s Museum of New Art. She lives and works between London and Detroit. Throughout her young life Clara Beckmann has traveled the globe immortalizing art figures of the early 20th century with her camera. In the Face of Art: Famous Dead Artists, Beckmann's lens is focused exclusively on these early innovators of modern art. Beckmann’s portraits are known for their dark clarity and simple texture. Her lack of personable knowledge and insensitivity toward her subjects combined with her self-taught technical skills allow us to intimately view some of the outstanding personalities of our era. The power of Beckman's portraits lies in the fact that they are memories of our existence. They reveal something of the nature of our age.

		Hanne Bloot - was born 1980 in Maastricht, Netherlands. She attended art school in Michigan, and currently is living in Detroit with her American husband. Bloot discovered photography in her early teens, beginning her studies at Ritvald Academy in Amsterdam at just seventeen. By the age of nineteen she was a P.S.1 grant recipient, where her series My Life As A Film (2000) was created and first exhibited. Alongside her photographic works such as the series Alone And Not Alone (2004-present) and Hidden (2007), over the subsequent years she also made many short films. Hanne Bloot’s application of light and color in her photography is painterly and yet contemporary at the same time, hinting at dark emotions. There is a sense of forced isolation, of two people sharing space yet disconnected, of a room within rooms. Her work is a quiet poetry of understatement and misdirection. As our eyes drift across Bloot’s photographs in search of a resting point, we invest the dark spaces between with a symbolic value: the alienation of life in an increasingly urban world.

		Stig Eklund - was born in Bergen, Norway in 1976. He has lived and worked in Detroit since 2004. An undiagnosed dyslexic, Stig Eklund left Secondary education at the age of sixteen. He spent his remaining teen years working at a cardboard factory in his home town. During that time, utilizing the materials at hand, he began to make and experiment with several pinhole cameras. The work from these rudimentary cameras developed into dark, moody photographs. He has remarked that he can only see "right" through a camera lens. Eklund's mature camera style is so strong that it can even shroud a street lamp, so that, instead of light, it seemingly emits darkness and shadows. His vision drapes geometrically clashing urban beauty with the sooty persona of its denizens, succinctly captured by a Norwegian artist who spends much of the year in Detroit's glowering twilight.

		Wallace Ford - was born in 1950 and grew up in Michigan. When he was four years of age Ford's mother, unable to financially care for the child, had the young boy declared a ward of the state. He was interned at the Coldwater State Hospital until he was legally of age, then released to a half-way house in Pontiac (where he has lived off and on for the last six years). It was only at the age of forty-one, while spending hobby time at a drug rehabilitation center, that Ford taught himself to paint.

		Missy Wiggins - was born in Detroit, 1982. Her family moved to London when she was five, and where she received her schooling. She currently lives and works in Detroit Her series of portraits and cityscapes represents the explosive effects of post 9/11 fear and neo-urbanization in the 21st Century, both in our environment and psyche - observed by the artist in Detroit and London.

		Shen-Ba Wong - was born in the Fujian Province in the year of the horse 1978. Wong’s father a Shanghai professor of art and her mother a doctor were victims of the Cultural Revolution, forced to relocate to the countryside as manual laborers in 1967. Her father worked at a farm distribution center, and would bring home broken planks from shipping pallets with which both he and eventually the young Wong would carve their first woodcuts. Later at Xiamen University, she reacted violently against the Xiamen Dada movement founded in 1986 by embracing still older techniques (the blockprint) combined with newer Western ideas (abstraction). She is now at the vanguard of those younger Chinese artists emerging today.
		Catalogue Essays: 1 & 2
		1
		(Important note: if you are under fifty years old, please skip down to the second essay below.) POST-ART: The End As We Know It by César Marzetti Late in the last century, the rise of theory spawned the rise of anti-aestheticism. Even for cultural theorists discussions concerning aesthetics were often carried out in a critical shorthand that failed to engage with the work of art, much less any notions of aesthetic experience. Any attempt to see the art object as embodying and conveying knowledge in itself quickly faded as an outdated conception. People started to make art at university in response to what theory they read. The writing became fundamental in creating the art: it served the art and the art served the writing. The practical body of work suffered accordingly. Any changes in the discourses surrounding contemporary art became intimately linked to art education and to the artist's 'professionalization'. Moving into this new century, the art object has become a distant concern. A work of art no longer applies as the source for one's conviction of its value. An art object is no longer visually distinct from a non-art object. Instead, its placement in an art space and context has orientated it within an established network of artistic practices, ideas, debates and modes of display otherwise known as the 'artworld'. This leaves art solely as an artworld activity, an institutional activity. Such a peripheral focus makes a discussion of the art object irrelevant and instead targets art only in relation to accepted discourse, modes of representation and elucidation.. A revived aestheticism encourages the idea that the intrinsic impact of a work of art has the potential to open radically different ways of thinking about identity, politics and culture. If we encourage 'theory' to enter a more reflective phase, we can expect the appearance of a new aestheticism. At a moment that is often termed 'post-theoretical', this is a direct index to which there is a renewed willingness among critics and philosophers to consider the ways in which cultural theory often overlooked key aspects of the object. The Kresge Prize hopes to restore a consideration of the physicality of the artwork, and of style and form. The Kresge Prize heralds a priority for art practice to develop organically again, without being constricted by measurable criteria but reclaiming now-mythologized terms such as creativity, artist and art: special qualities requiring freedom from any externally imposing theory.
		2
		(Important note: read only if you are familiar with current art trends and aged under fifty)
		POST-ART: Blablahblah by César Marzetti Late in the last century, the loss of blahblahblah spawned the rise of an anti-blahblahblah. Even for cultural theorists, discussions concerning blahblahblah were often carried out in a critical blahblahblah that failed to engage with the work of art, much less any notions of blahblahblah. To see the art object by itself as embodying and conveying blahblahblah quickly became an outdated blahblahblah within the contemporary art world. People started to make art at university in response to whatever blahblahblah they read. This blahblahblah became instrumental in creating the art: it served the art and the art served the blahblahblah. The practical body of work suffered accordingly. Any changes in the blahblahblah surrounding contemporary art are now intimately linked to art’s overall blahblahblah and specifically to its 'blahblahblahism'. But now, a distinctly 21^st Century blahblahblahism re-allows the idea that focusing on the total blahblahblah has the potential to open radically different ways of thinking about blahblahblah, blahblahblah and blahblahblah. If we allow the old 'blahblahblah' to enter a more reflective phase, we can expect the appearance of this new blahblahblahism. At a moment that is often termed 'post-blahblahblah', this is a direct index to which there is a renewed willingness among critics and philosophers to consider the ways in which cultural blahblahblah often overlooked key aspects of its reliance on philosophical blahblahblah. The art object itself has become a distant and vague blahblahblah. The work itself no longer applies as the blahblahblah for one's conviction of its 'blahblahblahism'. A work of art is no longer visually blahblahblah from a non-art object. Instead, its placement in an art space and context has orientated it within a coherent blahblahblah of artistic blahblahblahs, blahblahblahs, blahblahblahs and modes of blahblahblahs otherwise known as the 'blahblahblah'. This leaves art as a blahblahblah activity, an institutional blahblahblah (and no longer a unique species of blahblahblah as such). Such a peripheral blahblahblah makes any discussion of the art object suddenly blahblahblah and instead targets art only in relation to the modes of blahblahblah and the blahblahblah that surrounds it. However, with the birth of a new blahblahblahism, there is a will to return to a consideration of the artwork’s blahblahblah itself. Heralding this nascent blahblahblah suddenly becomes a priority for all of art practice to develop an even greater blahblahblah, without being constricted by measurable blahblahblahs but reclaiming such now-mythologized blahblahblahs as 'blahblahblah', 'blahblahblah' and 'blahblahblah': special qualities requiring no further blahblahblah from any externally imposing blahblahblahism.
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