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Exhibitions
(Hallwalls 20th Anniversary Essay) by Elizabeth Licata As tempting as it is to package the last twenty years of Hallwalls' exhibition programming into one coherent (albeit totally inaccurate) summary, that's not what this essay is about. Nor is this a brag sheet, listing all the artists who went on to illustrious careers, fame, and fortune thanks to the support and prescience of Hallwalls (although that did happen). In this strange twenty years--as good a period as any to illustrate the false linearity of art historical practice--the art world and Hallwalls witnessed the last gasps of Minimalism, the development of appropriation and mass media-related strategies, the rise and fall of the East Village scene, the growth of activist collaborations, and the continuation and revitalization of Conceptual art. Add new initiatives in both representational and abstract painting to this list and the difficulties of credible summation become clear. Even within the relatively limited space of twenty years, art won't arrange itself as neatly as we'd like it to. The curators
and artists involved with Hallwalls weren't really interested in neat
arrangements or logical progressions. While commercial galleries
manipulated trends, presenting artists in the context of newer, bigger,
better investment speculations, the mission of the Hallwalls curators
was much simpler. They tried to find artists who were not being
represented in the marketplace. They also placed the work of artists
who were represented commercially in contexts which emphasized aspects
other than art's attractiveness as a commodity. (What happened to this
work in the commercial networks later, or even concurrently, was an
inevitable consequence of dominant capitalist enterprise.) Hallwalls
curators gave artists the chance to develop new installations, they
gave guest curators the chance to develop new ideas for exhibitions,
and they encouraged the inclusion of other disciplines such as
performance, writing, and video. There is no one "typical" Hallwalls
exhibition, but there are types of exhibitions: single artist
installations, thematic group shows, artist residencies, guest-curated
shows, collaborations with other institutions, and collaborations with
other programs. It seems as
good a strategy as any to focus on individual evocative examples of
this programming, avoiding the promiscuous laundry list as well as the
elitist top ten list. What follows are eleven personal and subjective
selections from 20 years of Hallwalls exhibition programming plus one
outside exhibition, starting with 1976 and ending with 1994. As the
list progresses, it will become clear that these selections represent
not just exhibitions, but the changing attitudes and priorities of the
curators. Each one has had a distinct vision of how to go a task which
has never been adequately defined. Group shows at
Hallwalls have
always been surrounded by tension. The artists might be good
individually but look terrible together, or the concept might be
excellent, but not all the choices might be appropriate. Claudia Gould,
who served as exhibitions curator in 1982-83, was more interested in
identifying and presenting interesting work than in prioritizing a
conceptual umbrella, but with Motives, organized with CEPA and the
Albright-Knox, she succeeded in constructing a believable conceptual
structure as well as bringing together consistently powerful work. The
artists of Motives were united in questioning
societal norms and power structures. Video installations by Kathy High
and
Eva Buchmuller/SQUAT Theatre were combined with mixed media work by Christy Rupp and Doug Ashford, photography by Jennifer Boland, paintings by Jane Dickson, and drawings from Joseph Nechvatel. This diverse range of formal strategies became surprisingly invisible throughout the exhibition. While other presenting spaces often had problems with combining traditional and electronic media, ghettoizing either one or the other, Motives was one in a long line of presentations which demonstrated the unswerving commitment of Hallwalls staff to innovative installation techniques, regardless of media. The work of Colab members Rupp, Ashford, Dickson, and Nechvatel assumed a new formal autonomy outside of the often raucous context of group politics, while the multi-media installations created compellingly ominous environments. During her short tenure as curator, Claudia Gould organized a number of other important exhibitions, including installations by Mike Kelley (1983) and video artist Barbara Lattanzi (1983). She took her Hallwalls experience and contacts to subsequent positions at P.S. 1 and Artist's Space. |
