Another out-of-the-box show from Khoj: CERTIFICATES OF AUTHE

Another out-of-the-box show from Khoj: CERTIFICATES OF AUTHE

Postby Surabhi Trivedi » Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:09 am

New Delhi: KHOJ International Artists’ Association presents In Deed: Certificates of Authenticity in Art, a travelling exhibition curated by Susan Hapgood and Cornelia Lauf, that is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with texts by the curators Lorenzo Benedetti, Martha Buskirk, and Daniel McClean, from November 18, 2011 till December 16, 2011 at Khoj Studios, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi. There will also be a curator led walkthrough of the exhibition on November 18 at 6:30pm.

Certificates of authenticity are a critical aspect of art works today. They often even embody the artwork itself, while referring to it, serving as its deed, legal statement, and fiscal invoice. Certificates by artists validate the authorship and originality of the work and they allow the work of art to be positioned in the marketplace as a branded Product - no matter how immaterial or transient that product may be. Whereas the inherent importance of any given work of art should be self-evident to the connoisseur’s eye, certificates point the focus elsewhere, and prove that material or aesthetic qualities in an object sometimes do not suffice in constituting the work of art. In our globalized, capitalist present, the certificate and its implications about artistic thinking have become an instrument of business enterprise, as well as a philosophical statement about the nature of an artwork. Certificates have legal and ontological implications that make them fascinating documents of changing attitudes toward art and the role of artists.

Providing examples of artists’ certificates from the past fifty years, this exhibition reveals how roles have shifted and developed, as well as how the materials and content of art have changed too. Concise didactic texts will assist the viewer in contextualizing each inclusion in the presentation. Ranging from the most official looking printed documents, with their imprimatur of institutionalization, to dashed-off notations that perform the same definitive function in constituting and defining the parameters of a given art work.

"Overlapping with issues of intellectual property and copyright, the topic of certification is relevant not only to theoretical questions but also to the phenomenon of rising investments in art. They aid in regularising the art market and allowing value to accrue immaterial works,” Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists’ Association.

“Certificates have legal and ontological implications that make them fascinating documents of changing attitudes towards the role of art and artists. This exhibition aims to address a broad swath of issues--ranging from philosophical to economic to aesthetic--all of which are appropriate to a moment that is often characterized as postconceptual.” Susan Hapgood.

”Through this exhibition, we see that the certificates of authenticity may often stand independently from the art. And it is these odd scraps of paper that we are rightly gluing or tacking on the museum wall, without adding or subtracting from their immense status." Cornelia Lauf.
Artists in the Exhibition include: Ruben Aubrecht, Judith Barry, Robert Barry/Stefan Brüggemann, Hemali Bhuta and Shreyas Karle, Pierre Bismuth, Marinus Boezem, George Brecht, Daniel Buren, André Cadere, Marcel Duchamp, Maria Eichhorn, Urs Fischer, Dan Flavin, Andrea Fraser, Liam Gillick, The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Hans Haacke, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt
Ken Lum, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Josiah McElheny and Allan Kaprow, Jonathan Monk, Robert Morris, Antoni Muntadas, Yoko Ono, Cesare Pietroiusti, Adrian Piper, Emilio Prini, Robert Projansky and Seth Siegelaub, Raqs Media Collective, Robert Rauschenberg, Sharmila Samant, Joe Scanlan, David Shrigley, Daniel Spoerri, Haim Steinbach, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ben Vautier, Lawrence Weiner, Franz West, Ian Wilson, Cerith Wyn Evans, Carey Young, Andrea Zittel and Heimo Zobernig.

The exhibition has been shown at De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands and Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, Venice, Italy. It will be travelling to
Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai; Nero HQ, Rome, Italy; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Salt Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey and The Drawing Center, New York, USA.

About the curators:
Susan Hapgood is Senior Advisor and former Director of Exhibitions at ICI (Independent Curators International), New York, where she developed and managed all of the contemporary art exhibitions; and a Senior Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School. She has worked in a curatorial capacity at the Guggenheim Museum and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and has curated numerous exhibitions, including FluxAttitudes, Neo-Dada: Redefining Art 1958-62, and Slightly Unbalanced. Hapgood has authored numerous catalogues, and magazine articles for journals including Frieze, Art in America, and FlashArt, and lectured extensively at institutions such as New York University, and the New School, New York; Northwestern University, Chicago; College Art Association, Dallas; Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Sastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai; and at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She received a B.A. from the University of Rochester and M.A. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Cornelia Lauf is a writer, curator and editor of artist’s books. She received a doctorate in art history from Columbia University, and began her career at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She has written for magazines and institutional publications, ranging from Artscribe and Arts Magazine, during the 1980s, to her present reviews from Italy for Art in America. She was the founder of Camera Oscura, an alternative space devoted to craft, art, and agriculture, in a rural community in Tuscany. She is the editor and a co-founder of Three Star Books, a publishing house devoted to artist’s books, based in Paris. She has organized exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard, Casa di Goethe, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, among others. Lauf is a Professor of Art at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Venice, and lives and works in Rome.
Surabhi Trivedi
 
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