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Carnegie International: Pittsburgh's source of artistic enlightenment for more than a century Curator Madeleine Grynsztejn's vision Sunday, October 31, 1999 By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic
It's close to the opening day of the 53rd Carnegie International, and curator Madeleine Grynsztejn is in a great mood. The galleries are brimming with artists and new artworks. Energy is high. Things are going well. When the exhibition opens its doors to the public Saturday, there will be reason to celebrate.
Since 1997, when she was appointed curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Grynsztejn has been occupied with researching and producing the exhibition, which will feature 41 emerging and established artists from 22 countries. To find them, she visited more than 200 studios in at least 30 countries.
This was not her introduction, however, to the cosmopolitan experience. She was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and London. Her undergraduate studies, in the history of art and French, were done at Tulane University, New Orleans, and she completed a master's degree in the history of art at Columbia University, New York. She is fluent in Spanish, Dutch, English and French and reads German.
Grynsztejn came to Pittsburgh from Chicago, where she had been a curator at The Art Institute of Chicago since 1992. At Chicago, and in a previous curatorial position at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, she organized notable exhibitions that explored recent art of the Americas and at the U.S./Mexican border.
Last week she set aside some time to talk about the International, which will be at the museum through March 26, 2000.
QUESTION: You seem relaxed for someone who has a big opening coming up soon. How do things look in the galleries at this point?
ANSWER: I am relaxed. I'm feeling so good about the way that the show is looking, and I'm galvanized by the presence of the artists. I'm fortified by their enthusiasm for their work and for the exhibition. I'm excited by how excited they are. I'm deeply impressed by the commitment that the artists are bringing to the show. They give their entire being over to the creation of new artworks for us to enjoy.
Q: In an article in Carnegie Magazine this year, you talked about a new role for curators. Do you see yourself expediting a kind of philosophy by presenting certain artists? You're giving voice, but you're still going through a process of selection and exclusion. So, in a way, does that make you also political and an activist?
A: That's a very good question. Of course I'm staking out a position. My primary role is to be a catalyst for the creation of new art and for the engagement of the public in that art. I see myself as the connective tissue between those two entities. And in order to accomplish both well, I believe the curator has to present a convincing and accessible interpretation.
In the process of selecting and excluding artists' works, I stake out a position that necessarily parallels my beliefs -- my most passionate, deeply held, admittedly partial beliefs. All of us are political to that extent.
Q: Then we're subjective?
A: Exactly.
Q: As much as post-modernism would like to erase subjectivity -- we're not doing it.
A: Precisely.
Q: What makes this meaningful to a general audience?
A: The only way something is meaningful is for it to be grounded in one's life, and for it to resonate with daily existence -- in the mind and heart of each viewer.
Q: In the same article, you acknowledged that while the Internationals consider art globally, you are an American curator working on an American project for a primarily American audience. Would you expand upon that?
A: I do believe in a national character, and I do believe that cultures demonstrate certain characteristics. American culture has proven itself over and over again to be generous, open-minded and elastic in absorbing influences that at first seem foreign, and that's the way contemporary art functions as well.
I think that's why contemporary art can thrive in America. It doesn't in fundamentalist countries because it's inherently about a freedom of individual expression.
Q: How does site influence selection?
A: I can't help but be informed by my context. I want to be influenced by the fact that the International has an 103-year-old legacy. I want to be influenced by the traditional museum structure. This isn't the case with other international exhibitions. I thrive on those two parameters. I admit to them happily. If this exhibition were held in another museum, in another city, it would be a slightly different show, I am sure of it.
The most obvious example I can think of are the works by those artists who are responding to the specific and exceptional sites in the museum. In particular, I'm thinking about Kendell Geers and his work in the Grand Staircase that's directly influenced by the murals by John White Alexander that surround that staircase. What other museum in the world can offer a young artist from South Africa an environment like that?
What other museum could give Kara Walker a hall of sculpture with white marble statues to juxtapose with her black paper silhouettes? In what other museum could Diana Thater put a rainbow of colored air in a large public space like our Museum Cafe? Or Olafur Eliasson play with the reflection of trees in water as he does in our magnificent sculpture court? What other museum has an attached Carnegie Library, where Janet Cardiff could film on site for over a month?
This exhibition is so exceptional, not only in the U.S., but in the entire world.
Q: The number of large international exhibitions has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Is it possible that so many will dampen the status of the Carnegie International?
A: With the added potential competition comes the challenge to continue to be the arbiter in the area of contemporary art, to continue to be the model. It challenges you to define yourself. [There is strength] in being a triennial, rather than a biennial [as many of the new exhibitions are]. The biennial schedule is too fast to allow the museum to recover and reassess and to develop a novel strategy. A successful thematic premise must be cogent and thematically well-wrought, not put together in a rush.
Q: I noticed that most of the artists list participation in several of these exhibitions on their resumés. How do you think such demands are affecting them?
A: One of the effects of this efflorescence is that the same group of artists risk being invited over and over again. My fear -- what sometimes happens -- is that the artists don't have enough emotional and mental space to create a great work each and every time. The pace begins backfiring on the artists themselves who risk creating works that aren't full-fledged yet.
An advantage of our schedule [generally a triennial] is that I can invite artists early on. Most were invited at least a year ago.
Q: Two of the artists in the exhibition are deceased. Why did you include them?
A: If they were alive today, I would have included them. The exhibiting artists were selected on the basis of the influence they have had, and continue to have, on other artists and their impact on art history.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres left behind some of the greatest post-conceptual work done by any young artist in the past 10 years, in particular those artworks completed since 1995. He was concerned with injecting art with a generosity vs. an elitism. His work and that of Martin Kippenberger have continued to resonate very strongly in the minds of the public.
Q: In your catalog essay, you make the intriguing statement that the artworks in the exhibition "center on a conceptually oriented realism." Could you make that more accessible? How did you decide upon a theme for the exhibition?
A: I began by looking at the art, and I found that the artworks that stopped me in my tracks -- the ones that I posed questions to -- had to do with what constitutes reality today, what constitutes the real world around us. They obliged me to look at the world and to see that all of us are living in an incredibly transitional moment.
We are the first generation to go to the mall and to shop online, in the same day; to say hello to our parents in the evening and e-mail them in the morning. Every way that we communicate and interact with ourselves, each other and within our society speaks to living simultaneously in very different kinds of orders of experience that are virtual in one place, physical in another; digital in one place and architectural in another.
Q: It sounds like these artists are challenging the post-modern mindset that's dominated for so long?
A: Yes. Human beings are cyclical. After a solid decade of relative cynicism, of irony in contemporary art, or doubt about our capacity to be authentic and to experience authenticity -- the artists in this exhibition invite authentic experience, quite literally. You play Ping-Pong. You enter Ernesto Neto's building-sized sculpture. Your perception of a work like Willie Doherty's is influenced entirely by the pace at which you walk around it. Janet Cardiff's work cannot exist unless you wear it and hear it.
Q: So the artists create experiential moments that cannot be denied as being real?
A: Another way in which these artworks grab you visually is through emphatic, intense fabrication.
Bodys Isek Kingelez's "phantom village" is a model that is so intensely fabricated that it absorbs the viewer in a long process of visual interaction, the length and intensity of which generates a kind of intense presentness in your experience of this artwork.
Gregor Schneider's [installation] looks real but is completely fabricated. It also impresses a certain physicality. But the visitor feels a kind of uncanny literalness in it, too. Step out and you realize it's fabricated. There's a slippage. Look at Thomas Demand, who seems to document our normal visual world. His imagery is actually fabricated of cardboard and color.
Q: So those slippages -- nuanced departures -- are another way of making the viewer aware of the real, by pointing out how it can be manipulated so that an imitation can pass for authentic. These artists give the viewer at least three avenues by which to experience the real. But that isn't their only concern?
A: There is a kind of reaction against that severe question of reality, that began with post-modernism, that reached its height in the mid-'80s. But it's not a naive return. There's an awareness in this generation. They're aware of, for example, how the mass media can influence an individual's self-perception and perception of others. But they're saying that even with that lesson intact, there is still room for a personal vision, for a private belief, for a point of view that has validity and legitimacy. They're not pining for the past. They're in the present tense -- I like to call it the present imperfect.
Q: This exhibition will run into the new year, and you use the word millennium in the first sentence of your catalog essay. While International curators have typically tried to be representative in their selections, has the awareness of the eve of a new century caused you to try to be visionary as well?
A: I would love for that to come true, but I won't know that. I have confidence that the artwork in this show stands to influence the cultural moment -- that it will have an impact.
Q: Of the 41 artists chosen, one was born in 1927 and one in 1970. Ten were born in the 1950s and 23 -- more than half -- were born in the '60s. You yourself were born in 1962. Do you think that influenced your selection?
A: I'm sure that influenced the selection. I understand my own generation the best. I have a commitment to understand my generation.
Q: The majority of the artists are again from Europe and the United States. What does this say about global input?
A: The artists are generating these central locations. Some centralize in the traditional capitals of the art world. Many have reached the international forum without having left [home]. Johannesburg is not a central city -- [representation of artists based there] would not have happened eight years ago. The Web, information technology, increased travel, the increasing circulation of information, have allowed some to thrive from their home bases.
Q: Most of the contemporary forms of expression are represented in the exhibition, but not performance art. Why is that?
A: The problem with performance is that unless you have [a large budget], it can happen only once. The question is, how do you give parity to an artist if he or she can only be represented temporarily?
Q: Two of the artists have shown in past Internationals, Ann Hamilton and Jeff Wall. Why did you select them this time?
A: For the same reasons I selected the others. And, they continue to make incredibly fresh and exciting work.
Q: The recent Brooklyn Museum of Art/New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani controversy has pulled the media spotlight to the art world. Are you fearful the type of issue-focused attention being generated will have a negative impact on the reception or perception of the 1999 International?
A: If anything, it pleases me to think that the Carnegie International will educate New Yorkers to Giuliani's politics when they see Ofili's beautiful painting and Sam Taylor-Wood's glorious photography. In this instance, Pittsburgh will be teaching New York a lesson in open-mindedness and in good taste in art and in the ability to make up one's own mind. A museum is always a public forum, but it should not become a political football.
Q: Do either Ofili or Taylor-Wood address religion in their works here?
A: The particular Ofilis I chose happen not to carry religious imagery, but they do bear elephant dung. Taylor-Wood is showing a photograph of a room taken in a five-second exposure that covers 360 degrees. Her other two works are large photos with narrative suggested on the bottom edges in a composition inspired by traditional Western painting.
Q: There are other artists in the exhibition whose work is potentially equally controversial, and you must have been aware of that when you selected them. Is there a role for controversy in art?
A: Art is not inherently controversial. Art asks new questions of its audience and explores issues that are sometimes unacknowledged. Art explores the most urgent issues of our times with passion and with visual intelligence. In doing so, it should generate discussion, and if we wish to call that discussion controversial, we can. It should create public discussion. Good art always has.
Q: Jane and Louise Wilson interest me because you say in the catalog that they address "how power is made physically manifest in architectural design." We are locally involved in a heated discussion sparked by an architectural critique. Their work was completed at a decommissioned American military base in England. What is it about?
A: How architecture can generate a certain fear, a certain authority, a sense of isolation.
Q: Is this Carnegie International child-friendly?
A: This show is people-friendly, and it's approachable, and you can choose to access it on any level with the help of our educational department. There will always be educators on premise. We've written a very approachable gallery guide. We're dedicated to communication with all of our audience.
Q: Any closing thoughts?
A: I've worked on this project for over 2 1/2 years, with a superb staff and a marvelous director, and I'm as eager as I was on the first day to see this exhibition and to enjoy the fruits of our labor with all of the audiences.
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