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RICHARD KOH FINE ART AND ARNDT PRESENTS
A Fringe Event of Art Stage Singapore 2012

Sophie Calle
George Condo
Gilbert & George
Wim Delvoye
Thomas Hirschhorn
Vic Muniz

10 - 31 Jan 2012

Venue: Richard Koh Fine Art

71 Duxton Road,
Singapore 089530

In an exciting coup for Singapore, RKFA presents a few giants of the international contemporary art scene: Sophie Calle from France, Gilbert & George (born in Italy and the United Kingdom respectively), Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, native New Yorker George Condo, Brazillian Vik Muniz and Belgian Wim Delvoye. Having previously been invited to exhibit in some of the most important institutions in the world including the Guggenheim, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum in the USA, Tate Modern and the Hayward Gallery in the UK, and other public museums in Russia, France, Germany, Australia and Spain, these artists and their work will be familiar to most. Delvoye was a favourite at the first Art Stage Singapore with a gothic architecture-inspired crowd pleaser on display, Calle has made headlines over the years, Condo secures new followers even as times change, intertwining the topics of art history and creative practice - as does Vik Muniz. Hirschhorn remains true to his own (rickety) track and Gilbert & George, of course, offer the wonder of a profound artistic collaboration ongoing for more than fourty years.

Gilbert & George have been working as a team since the late Sixties, creating art that regularly combines fun, dry wit and representation of the world as observed from their joint perspective. The now famous pair considers their art to include not only the pieces they make, sometimes site-specific or site-inspired, but also anything and everything they do in life - so that they themselves are essentially breathing, evolving works of art. Taking stimulation from London’s cosmopolitan East End, the artists are known for instantly recognisable references to England and British ways of life especially for the use of landmarks, products and symbols such as the Union Jack, sectioned or whole, within photograph- or postcard-based works. The themes they choose to address, however, often refer to modern life through avenues that are somewhat global or applicable to many, including urban socialization, relationships and human interaction, death, danger and sexuality. Today certain Gilbert & George works which contain self-portraiture in many ways represent an overview of the artists and their combined careers and artistic output; audiences can enjoy a humorous juxtaposition of the surface-level banality of the artists’ personal style and everyday existence against the kaleidoscopic visuals they construct, before delving deeper into the message of each series or individual work.

Sophie Calle has famously followed, borrowed from, and infringed on personal lives for the sake of her art, which is essentially conceptual in nature. She is typically known to exhibit photographs and text as representation of work that took place over time according to certain guidelines, experiments and investigations. Her art sometimes involves record of a deliberate and conscious experience of major events in her own life, and always lays bare issues and objects generally considered to be personal and private. By some Calle is thought of as a feminist artist, particularly for revealing and referencing the way she has been treated by men, but overall she is best known for her general eccentricity and its various manifestations; for example creating a fake graveyard to be viewed from her kitchen window or starting her career with the shadowing of strangers in the street. Her work provokes discomfort and awkwardness and is usually revealing in an intrusive way, requiring courage from both artist and audience. It can be taken violently or with an air of quiet reflection and thus its meanings and effects depend greatly on connections provided or withheld by the viewer.

The art of Wim Delvoye is heavily conceptual but also constructed to be aesthetically suitable, in a deliberate and calculated manner. It involves manipulation of materials for sculpture and the use of specific technical skills, such as X-ray photography or tile glazing, for installations and other pieces. Working  out of an art farm in China Delvoye employs tattoo artists to decorate live pigs, which can be seen as permanently burdening the animals with responsibility or even as raising their value by turning each pig from ordinary reproduction to unique object. From any angle, the violation of pigs’ skin in the name of art creates an unusual arena for audiences to contemplate and debate. Despite sometimes presenting potentially disturbing subjects, Delvoye also creates very complicated and delicate artworks that are easy on the eye, often cut to precision with lasers, and thus is seen as a highly collectable artist with broad-spectrum appeal. His references, best known to include Roman Catholic culture and symbolism, lean towards linking material and spiritual existence as well as the functions, meaning and purpose of the human body. The artist, operating from his own leading-edge, is fascinating for his ideas as much as for the seeming conflictions and contradictions produced from them; some works are tame and considerably tasteful in execution while others are confrontational and can stir-up a reaction of disgust.

George Condo’s work has been subject to criticism and yet has stood well over time, earning travelling exhibitions and proving there are audiences, both devoted and new, that include fans of his obvious and child-like style. Contemporary art history has placed the artist as a kind of link between high- and low-brow art and as a representative of the New York art scene of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties that produced so many big names. The artist and his work thus possess a sort of multi-level relevance today, all the more validated by the commissioned collaboration with popular musician Kanye West for album and single covers and more. Throughout his career Condo has produced portraits which reference the painting times and styles of old masters but his treatment of this sometimes sensitive subject matter has earned him ridicule. The artist seems to lay the irony at a shallow depth - and curators even more so when they hang the works salon-style – yet the work fast becomes a trick played on all involved in the art worlds when reviewers seriously attempt to assess its value, content and meaning. A bad review, trying to make sense of Condo’s work and career in a seemingly intelligent way, can be so hilarious a struggle for the poor writer to make a detached reader laugh until they cry. Condo will perhaps forever be known as a (some) peoples’ artist.

Working out of Chicago and New York over the years, Vik Muniz has transitioned from practicing as a sculptor to (among other things) exploring photography, making variations on land art, and ‘sculpting’ drawings out of unusual materials -  most notoriously edible goods that sometimes have linkage to the subjects in his work. He has appropriated and recreated some of the larger-than-life works in Western art history, and also created new art after some of history’s greatest painters and printmakers. Photographing his drawings (many of which could be considered sculpture or even relief) and exhibiting the C-prints with titles of little fanfare such as ‘Pictures of….’ he upsets the notion of distinct high- and low-brow art terms and makes pictures and picture-making special and contemporary. Much of Muniz’s work is simple but its impact is often quite heavy, contradicting his use of lighthearted and short-lived physical materials. Using chocolate syrup to ‘draw’ a photograph of Jackson Pollock painting for example, he erased much of the friendliness and humour of the material, and his commissioned skywritings of cloud shapes bore little resemblance to the freedom and weightlessness of real clouds, instead carrying an intangible responsibility as work of art. Muniz keeps audiences on their toes, creating without limitations in wide range of medium, size and scale, and with an element of surprise that has earned him the reputation of an illusionist.

In the art of Thomas Hirschhorn there is rebellion against materialism based on fashions, trends and notions of quality and luxury, perhaps informed by his past as a graphic designer. Through the use of everyday materials and the unsteady, sometimes unsightly, construction of installations and sizable works, he seems to continually search for honesty and transparency, commenting on current day with his topic choices including airports and hotels. He is well known for abstract-interpretation pieces combining myriad connective elements in bizarre and unexpected dynamism. The common materials do not usually detract from the impact of Hirschhorn’s art, especially as in most cases the artist is intentionally overboard with the amount of products placed within their allotted, only semi-organised space. Similarly, his works on paper destroy the manufactured and the artificially clean with organic shapes and unpredictably fluid, almost melting or extending, pathways of ink. Hirschhorn’s mark, rather than to undergo transitions or grow to a more refined aesthetic as many artists’ skills do with time (or with access to more expensive materials), is now recognised worldwide for what it is: rare and curiously messy yet approachable and refreshing.

This is a diverse group with work ranging from conceptual art to experiments in painting, yet these artists are all of similar standing, watched for their impact on the current day. Their art is viewed not only as individual pieces, but also in the context of their careers and creative outputs up to now, as well as the context they are created and shown within, respective to markets, trends and the activities of the artists’ peers. For a Singapore and Asia based audience, local access to a private showing of pieces from these seven artists is an extremely special opportunity to which only international travel to the most popular fairs, biennales and blockbusters can come close. Indeed for the moving circle of contemporary art watchers an exhibition of this kind of selection, in conjunction with a major fair, is the very reason for their travel to the island - established artists on show in a new environment to fresh eyes, their art to be experienced all over again with potential to spark continued appreciation, conversation and inspiration.

Suraya Warden