On the Uses of the Gallery Text No 2


History of art has developed in such a way that the gallery has changed its function from being a place where art is presented into a place where art is created. The history of contemporary art can be described as a history of totalization of a work of art. Such an outline of changes leading to the present condition of art is not the only possible one, it does not even follow the major steps of the changes, yet it is relevant and useful for the purpose of this text. The slogan „art for art’s sake” dating from the beginning of the modernist epoque summarises the policy of its visual aesthetics. Since then form has been the meaning of art; forms resulting from forms, works of art resulting from other works of art. Art seen as such has a constant feature, which can be „medically” described as a syndrome of gigantic structures. The tendency to gigantism appears when a given artistic formula looses the drive to seek for meaning, when the new methods of creating art cease to be the driving force of change. Then the artist focuses on the scale; the sizes of the paintings go beyond the perception span, sculptures become monumental. The works of the modernist avant-garde movements also had a stage of driving towards maximal filling of space. Finally, in case of installations art or spacial objects, the work of art becomes the space - it becomes totalized. A contrary view was presented by conceptual art, where the object filled the whole of the mental space. The process described above: the transision from the innovation phase into the phase of gigantic effectuations, was a process of a „horizontal” kind, an internal one, characteristic of all modernist avant-garde movements, yet it has also developed in a „vertical” way from the very beginnings of the history of contemporary art. There is, however, an important difference between the art of structures resulting from the development of modernist forms and forms of contemporary art as to the problem of space. In the former case the work of art is to rule over the space and to dominate the perception of the viewer. In the latter case the work of art becomes the space and incorporates the viewer into its structure. It is an important element of contemporary art which makes it unique: the space of art has become the living space - the natural space of the human being. A person takes an internal position in art, moving within the space of the work of art, „curving” it as he is a part of the composition. In contemporary art, identity is the identity of the space of art and the living space. Together with the changes of the forms of art, there have been changes in the infrastructure of effectuation. The studio has ceased to be the place where art is created. Now art is created directly on the site of presentation, often using - as in the case of the site-specific formula - the specific aspects of the site. In the past, the studio was not only a practical necessity, it was also a complete artistic culture. The studio - a special, mysterious and sacred place - compared to the alchemist’s laboratory, where ideas get crystallised and undergo a process of turning into the shape of a work of art, the final product of the struggle between the spirit and the matter - the studio understood as such has lost its significance. The change does not concern just the technical conditions, it is also signifies a mental change in the artist as a human being, and a measure of changes art has undergone, of the distance between the traditions and the present state of art. While creating art the artist works in a space identical with the living space, and moreover, he seeks new spaces for life/art to exist, thus widening the specific existential area. While creating art he remains beeng - in - the - world. Art is a space which belongs to him, as well as to others, it is in Levinas’s words, the space - you. The other ego is the permanent context of effectuation. The space of art has been a common space already since thinking about art in general and in reference to a single art object was born. Stressing the common context of art and the work of art does not, however, emphasize their social, and sociological meaning, but rather the permanent context of a different personality. Addressing art to the masses of society, to humanity, or to an abstract contemporary man was a domain of the modernist thinking, where the individuality of a work of art was measured by the individuality of its form, and therefore limited to the visual structure of the work of art, it was visuality itself. Yet the work of art considered as a living space is at the same time a space of meaning. The form bound to existence must in itself bear a meaning. Correspondingly, the aesthetics of form is useless in the case of art connected with the practice of human living. In the light of those changes within art and within the work of art itself, the role of the gallery has changed. A work of present art is no longer transported from a studio into a gallery, and the gallery is no longer perceived in the modernist way as an objective space, emotionally indifferent, where thanks to white walls and uniform lighting the objectivised and formalised artistic structure finds an expositional extention of its existence away from the studio/store. Now the gallery does not take a work of art inside, it becomes a place where a work of art is created. The gallery is a part of that work and its architecture becomes the space of the work. In case of site-specific works one can observe the function of galleries constructed in places different from the traditional modernist exhibition scheme described above. A „modernist” gallery is now practically a shop, a place for the commercialised art product. Present art in itself is non-commercial. The items which may be there for trade are residues, documents, or side-effects which developed during the process of art making. It is because the gallery is the only place where works of art exist, and - to generalise - where acts of present art exist. The work of art does not exist in its final shape either before appearing in the gallery, or after the presentation ends. It may sound obvious, yet it is important to realize that it is a fundamental feature of contemporary art, resulting from its history and differentiating it from art as traditionally understood and practiced. Only that kind of art deserves to be called contemporary art. The consequences of those changes for art trade have been described above. The dream of the modernist avant-garde movements has come true: art has escaped the trade system. The history of the effectuation of this policy is concomitant with the history of contemporary art, with the development of its forms and ideas, and the final effect has been reached only now, after the modernist era, as the phenomenon has become so common that it can stand for normal practice in art. The consequences of those changes in art concern museums, too. Another policy of the modernist avant-garde movements has been implemented here: although museums have not been set on fire, they have become useless, as they cannot serve their purpose in case of present art. I do not know how museums want to tackle contemporary art. At the moment, museums seem to have taken offence with it, they sabotage contemporary artistic culture, and in their collections there is a large gap in late-twentieth century art. Huge lies have been accumulated concerning present art as shown in museums. Art remains out of reach for those institutions, which are not prepared to deal with such art either in the intellectual, or organisational sense.

What should a perfect museum for present art look like?

Perhaps - as discussion has only begun - it should be in the shape of a gigantic honeycomb made of cells - individual spaces, differing in size and shape, in structure and matter, used by invited artists, and growing; or perhaps it should be a sort of a hiper-installation, expanded by new implements, where artists would either add or take away individual items, building a common entity, as if adding references to references with the main text missing. There is one certainty: a modern museum must act similarly to the way so-called alternative galleries act, but on a permanent basis, on a larger scale and with complete openness, that is without individual evaluation. A separate problem is collecting documentation, which is obviously crucial, although even here the practice of galleries and museums shows an embarassing lack of sensitivity. Present art is being created by artists - and it disappears. Even now the irreversible losses are great, and in a few years’ time they will be irreparable, as human memory has its limits.There will be a gap in artistic culture, a gap in the intellectual continuum of art, filled only with mythical oral tradition and bits of information dispersed in a few published texts. As for the material substance, there will remain some relics that would not, as in the case of archaeology of lost civilisations, bear any meaning. The transformations of art as presented here, observed from a wider perspective, show changes in culture that call for a response from the institutions responsible for its infrastructure: galleries and museums. If they do not respond, they will remain confined to the traditionally understood art, they will be marginalized, as they are already far from the frontline of changes where art thrives.

£ukasz Guzek
Translated by Justyna Pi¹tkowska