ART-PRESENTATION: AKTION
Conceptual artists often relied on documentation of their ideas, and photography was a convenient means to this end. Photography could be integrated into the concept or system that the artist devised, just as a diagram or a text could illustrate it. In this sense, the documentation is the work of art, and vice versa, and because of this the usual hierarchical distinction between “work” and “document” is undone.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Richard Saltoun Gallery Archive
The exhibition “AKTION: Conceptual Art & Photography (1960-1980)” at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London, explores the Conceptual Art Movement over two decades of photography, through the work of 26 artists from 13 countries. The presentation investigates different conceptual uses of photography within practices dealing with Feminism, political activism, performance and social critique. To investigate the “real world” and the “real-time” embedded in processes and places, performing experiments Dennis Oppenheim identify the artist’s body as an agent, material, and place of art, reaching out to multiple spaces and times. In directing the viewer towards the body as the source and the subject of his works, the artist stands in a critical manner to conventional materials and the conceptual limits of performance and sculpture. For example in his “Reading Position for Second Degree Burn” (1970), Oppenheim went to a Long Island beach and exposed his body to the sun. He placed a large book entitled “Tactics” over his chest. In this work represented by two photos, one shot shows the artist lying on the beach before the sunburn and the other after without the book. An unburned rectangle occupies the place where the book was. Marie Yates is known for her conceptual works addressing issues of representation, signification and sexual difference, in the form of installation, image and text. One of the high lights of the exhibition is “Waterfall Working Islawr-dref” (1975), the visual and textual documentation of a journey in the wild, this marks the first time this work has been on public view since 1975, when it was produced for the British Council exhibition “Time Words and the Camera”. In counter distinction to many photographers, Conceptualists were not concerned with photographic quality, whether determined by the print, composition, lighting, or editing. Furthermore, their dryly objective approach resulted in photographs that prevent access to the artist’s personality, and which prevent a strong emotional response from the viewer. On presentation is “Box 4: LEDA und der SCHWAN: Otto Muehl” (1964), a collection of highly experimental films of actions and performances by the Austrian pioneer of structural film-making, Kurt Kren. Comprised of 51 photographic postcards, Eleanor Antin’s “100 Boots” is an epic visual narrative in which 100 black rubber boots stand in for a fictional “hero” making a “trip” from California to New York City. Over two-and-a-half years, Antin photographed the boots against different backdrops across the U.S., and then turned the pictures into postcards, which she then mailed to approximately 1,000 people around the world. In conjunction with the boots’ “arrival” in New York City, the postcards were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. The project speaks not only to the reproduction and dissemination of images, but also about how the material reality of the images (their settings and their existence in mailboxes) was in stark contrast to the everyday lives of the people who received the cards. Deeply influenced by pagan and Indian mysticism, contemporary philosophy and Russian Suprematism, Rudolf Schwarzkogler was a founding member of Viennese Actionism, together with Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, and Hermann Nitsch. He was only 25 when he staged the performance “Aktion mit seinem egenen Korper” (1966), just 4 years before his death. In a sequence of 15 photos he embodies a despairing feeling toward the cruelty of the world. The work belongs to his “Aktion” series, which also takes the title of the exhibition.
On presentation are works by: Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Renate Bertlmann, Marcel Broodthaers, , Günter Brus, James Coleman, Ger Van Elk, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Robert Filliou, Barry Flanagan, Hans Haake, Nigel Henderson, Ed Hering, John Hilliard, Kurt Kren, John Latham, Roelof Lown, Ana Mendieta, Tony Morgan, Otto Muehl, Dennis Oppenheim, Liliana Poter, Dieter Roth, Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Marie Yates.
Info: Richard Saltoun Gallery, 41 Dover Street, London, Duration: 13/7-25/8/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.richardsaltoun.com
