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CHANCE, PERFECTION, SIMPLE OR COMPLEX?

CURATED BY TONY GODFREY

Pablo Capati III Nona Garcia Kawayan de Guia Nilo Ilarde Geraldine Javier Donna Ong Christina Quisumbing Ramilo Zhao Renhui

DECEMBER 16 2017 - JANUARY 27 2018 About the Curator

Tony Godfrey came from Britain to Asia in 2009 and now lives and works in the Philippines as teacher, writer, and curator. For many years he ran the MA () at Sotheby’s Institute London. He has published books on contemporary art and his 1998 book, Conceptual Art, was the frst publication to see conceptual art as a global phenomenon. His 2009 book Painting Today also tried to survey paintings as a global phenomenon. He is currently working on books on the Balinese artist Mahendra Yasa and the Shanghai painter Ding Yi. CHANCE, PERFECTION, SIMPLE OR COMPLEX?

I like art and I like owning art, but I have never been rich. However, in the Eighties and Nineties when conceptual artists like Jenny Holzer and made great t-shirts I could afford them. I hardly ever wore these two T-shirts by Gonzalez-Torres and Matthew Barney. I always wanted to use them in an exhibition like this because they seemed such polar opposites: simple and complex; minimal and maximal. Likewise, these two works by Byars and Tinguely seemed exemplars of perfection and chance in art – another polarity to find oneself between.

As Tina had asked me to curate a show I sent this letter to eight artists whose work intrigued me and seemed appropriate: Pablo Capati III, Nona Garcia, Kawayan de Guia, Geraldine Javier, Nilo Ilarde. Donna Ong, Ling Quisumbing, Robert Zhao:

Dear artist I would like to invite you to make a work or works for a show I am curating at Artinformal in December 2017 (opening on 16th). The title of the exhibition will be “Chance, Perfection, Simple or Complex”. “Is the best art simple or complex? Do you believe in the possibility of perfection or is it all determined by chance?” Those are the questions I am asking you - both for the text in the catalogue and for the work or works you intend to make for this exhibition.

Or, put another way,

Should art say as little as possible and as precisely as possible, or should it let it all out and swamp the senses? Can art achieve perfection, or is it all a matter of chance?

As well as your work and that by the seven other artists working in the Philippines or Singapore, I will show a work each by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Matthew Barney. & Jean Tinguely. (see attached) For me their works can represent art at its simplest, at its most complex (or maximalist), as aspiring to perfection or as determined by chance.

I can’t afford art by famous artists but I can afford the t-shirts they design! There are two I have kept and rarely worn because they seem to represent two opposing positions. One was commissioned by Agnes B from Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the other was commissioned by the the in Minneapolis for an exhibition by Matthew Barney. One is anonymous, one is not only named but signed on the back. One is a minimal statement, the other is baroque. One is meant to act as an intervention, the other as the expression – for those who know his work – of a personal and excessive vision.

We could say one is classical and one is romantic. We could say one tries to make us think, the other expresses the authorial personality. We could say one is conceptual and the other expressionist.

Our understanding of what art is and what art does is based on such binaries and this exhibition will seek to explore that.

1 A similar binary is set up by two other works I acquired over the years: a James Lee Byars multiple that I was given: a golden circle, an image of perfection, and a diptych drawing by Jean Tinguely, or rather by the drawing machine he set up to produce apparently random marks. (I bought this mis-catalogued at a provincial auction.)

Where do you place yourself and your work; who do you have a greater kinship too? How does this drive you? We can allow about 6-7 metres of wall space for you and each of the other seven artists – or equivalent floor space. I am flexible, of course.

I really look forward to discussing this with you soon and hopefully working with you on the exhibition itself. It should be fun!

All best wishes! Tony

PS. I plan to do a lecture during the duration of the exhibition on Jean Tinguely (and Niki de Saint-Phalle) on chance; James Lee Byars on perfection (& question) Felix Gonzalez-Torres on simplicity and intervention; Matthew Barney on maximalism and personal mythology.

I get the same pleasure installing work by famous European and American artists next to those by my Filipino friends as I did when I curated a print show in Jogjakarta and hung works by my Indonesian friends, S.Teddy, Agus Suwage and other, next to those by Rembrandt, Dürer and other famous European printmakers.

Chance: Jean Tinguely. Jean Tinguely maybe best known today as the husband of the great French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, but his Métamatics made between 1955 and 1959 were notable as machines that made art. Many people, including Marcel Duchamp, were invited by Tinguely to choose paper and pencils for such a machine and then let it produce a work of apparently random lines and dots that, yet, often looked like a piece of 1950’s gestural abstraction. Saint Phalle similarly asked people, including Johns and Rauschenberg, to fire bullets at her TIR paintings to allow chance to determine the work.

Perfection: James Lee Byars. Asked his favourite sound, James Lee Byars replied “O”; asked his favourite touch, he said “silk” which sums up his paradoxicality. Zen-like, he believed in perfection, but he relished this sensual world. From 1957 to 1967 he lived in Kyoto studying traditional Japanese culture and Buddhism. After that he wandered the world, making performances, of gold or glass and, always, paper works. Letters were important to him, especially those sent to his close friend . Terminally ill with cancer, he had himself moved to Cairo and a hospital bed from which he could watch the pyramids as he died – he always liked simple, perfect shapes. Because his idealism was so contrary to other conceptual artists he has rarely been considered as one, but like them his main goal was to ask questions. In 1971 he set up the World Question Center. “What is question?” he asked. What is the perfect question?

2 Simple: Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Is this art? A pile of posters, a pile of sweets, a white T- shirt with a few words written on it. I remember talking to an American artist friend. He told me how he went to Gonzalez-Torres’s first show in a commercial gallery. All there was was a stack of posters on the floor. “Did you take one?” I asked. “Of course!” He replied, “It was fantastic!” “Do you still have it?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he said, “I didn’t actually like the poster so I chucked it in a trash can once I was out on the street, but the idea that you could walk into a commercial gallery and take something for free was wonderful. That was the art, taking the poster.” Simple works like this, work as interventions. Simple things make us think. Simple things depend very much on their context. Wearing this T-shirt, walking down a mall, with all the adverts and signs begging you to buy things, this T-Shirt would mean something else.

Complex: Matthew Barney. It is hard to think of a more OTT show than Barney’s retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2003 – where I bought this T-shirt. Large video screens were hung from the ceiling in a profusion normally associated with Christmas decorations. Not an intervention, an immersion. The spectacle was so extreme it was hard to know if there was a structure underneath or it was just chaotic – a sensory overload. There is no irony: talking about his personal mythology, he talks with the wide eyed candour of a teenage boy explaining the character in the dystopian science fantasy universe of Warhammer.

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