Participating Artists

Mike Glier Vincent Desiderio Andres Serrano Anne Katz Shelly Silver Roy Rogers Matthew Geller Harvey Bletchman Grace Graupe-Pillard Charles Lahti Lillian Mulero Anne Turyn June Wilson Becky Howland Shedrack Jones Don Leicht Josely Carvalho Michael Byron Leon Golub John Strauss Franc Palaia Michael Ross Marsha Ginsberg Randolf Black NEW MUSEUM LIBRARY Peter Hopkins Patrice Lorenze Joss Gonzalez Penelope Goodfriend Andrea Evans April Palmieri Jerry Kearns Daniel Levine Ellen Quinn Luis Stand Jody Wright Louis Laurita Tom Kokcn Candace Hill Brad Melamed Ann Messner Greg Lawrence Ame Gilbert Julius Valiunas Barbara Broughel David Robbins Richard Dunn Eric Drooker Paul Smith Betty Tompkins Aric Obrosy Master Alomar Julie Wachtel Michael Lebron Mario Asaro Joseph Nechvatal Robert Gordian Peter Burgess Nancy Spero Safiya Abdulah Felix Gonzalez Barbara Lipp Jody Zellen Gary Dodson Sean Flynn Rae Langsten Peter Nagy Chris Branon .. Margery Mailman Herb Perr Howard Halle Tom Lawson Mike Osterhout Saul Ostrow Barbara Westermann Keith Rambert Martha Rosier Greg Davidek Dona Ann McAdams Anne Doran R. Palumbo Florence Weise Alice Albert Alan Belcher Yolanda Hawkins Tony Silvestrini Rachel Romero Todd Lindsteen-Ayoung Eva Cockroft Vanalyne Green Conrad Atkinson Janet Koenig William Niederkorn Micki McGee BY Dennis Thomas Jennifer Bolande Tim Rollins Allan McCollum Day Gleeson Julie Ault Betsy McLindon Edgar Heap of Birds Doug Ashford A. M. Patersen Dennis Adams Richard Limber Mundy McLaughlin Redistribute America Movement Christy Rupp Susan Morgan Jessica Diamond Haim Steinbach Leslie Tonkonow Jane Dickson Elders Share The Arts Amanda Church Klaus Staeck Ellen Berkenblit GROUP MATERIAL Peter Oertwig Richard Ray Whitman Bill Radawec Oliver Wasow Judith Croce Carlo Cesta Ida Applcbroog Karen Sylvester Barbara Ess Lisa Neighbour Keith Christensen Anton van Dalen Charles Yuen Bill Allen Tom Bassman Suzanne Hellmuth Marshall Collins Erika Rothenberg Michael Coulter Jock Reynolds Angelo Bellfatto Greg Sholette

The individual views expressed in the exhibitions and publications are not necessarily those of the Museum. ON VIEW April 12, 1986-Juoe 12, 1986

The ON VIEW program ts supported in part by grants from theJerome Foundation, Citibank, N.A., and by funds from the Arthur Sahn Memorial Fund. The issue of collaboration, a familiarone in standard art histories, is "MASS" offers the viewer the opportunity to sort through the visual and extremely problematic and complex in relation to Group Ma terial. For it is textual overload of contemporary culture. It demonstrates how context is not merely a matter of four artists who collaborate with each other ("Group critical to the construction of meaning and that without it, images can very Material"), but four artists who have collaborated , over the past six years, with easily serve as signs for quite a different set of beliefs than originally literally hundreds of other artists. These collaborations have assumed diverse intended. Like all of Group Material's projects, "MASS" is not a naive forms: a giant artwork, like the one currently on display ("MASS"); an rendering of an outmoded concept (m ass), but precisely the opposite. It is a intervention within the institutions of high culture themselves ("Americana" new opportunity to reconsider "MASS" in all of its contemporary significance: at the 1985 Whitney Biennial); and public art projects ("Subculture," sited on mass, as in the masses; mass, as in scientific density; mass, as in mass culture the IRT subways in 1983). They also assume more conventional, though and mass media; mass, as in a religious mass, etc. etc. The work of Group hardly traditional, exhibitions mounted at various alternative spaces, including Material is not limited to the strictly political but is intended to operate within their own, throughout New York City: "Alienation," 1980; "The Gender the realm of the much larger and more generalized culture. As one member Show," 1981 ; "Primer (For Raymond Williams)," Artists Space, 1982; explains: "Part of what we do is set up a dialogue between polarities. We try "Timeline: A Chronicle of U.S. Intervention in Central and Latin America," to include different points of view .... We try to think of ourselves as P.S. I, 1984; and "Liberty and Justice," The Alternative Museum, 1986. In enlightening rather than propagandizing. The world is like that, not just one other words, unlike most collaborators, Group Material does not produce point of view." "MASS." collaborative art objects in the manner of, for example, General Idea, Gilbert and George, or Clegg and Guttmann. Rather, it has appropriated the ultimate -William Olander modern art institution-the public exhibition-as its artwork and transformed *All quotes by Group Material are from "What is political art... now?" The it from a platform with which to advance careers, promote collecting, and, in Village Voice, October 15, 1985. general, divorce art from life, into a social and political statement normally **Roland Barthes, "The Great Family of Man," Mythologies (London: lacking in most conventionally organized shows. As Group Material explains, Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp. 101-102. "We seek to bring the supposed neutrality of the established art space and practice into serious question. By placing fine art next to mass produced "MASS" is a traveling exhibition which has appeared at Hallwalls, Buffalo, consumer images and historical artifacts [for instance], Group Material is N.Y., Spaces, Cleveland, Ohio, and Aljira Arts, Newark, N.J., among others. asking, 'how is culture made and who is it made for?"'* Group Material is not concerned with the supposedly disinterested aura surrounding art and STATEMENT by Group Material exhibitions . On the contrary, Group Material is devoted to showing just how art intersects with life, practically on a daily basis: "What the work is actually Group Material was founded in 1979 as a response to the limited framework doing and where it's coming from .... Who's making this, and why .... " Group of a mercantile cultural system. It is a New York City-based organiza tion of Material has taken to heart a criticism by Roland Barthes written almost thirty artists dedicated to the creation, exhibition, and distribution of art that . years ago about the exhibition, "The Family of Man," circulated by the increases social awareness. Group Material encourages people to become : involved in the making of their own society and culture. All of Group Material's exhibitions and installations are intended to True, children are always born: but in the whole mass of the human question perceived notions of what art is and where it should be seen. It problem, what does the "essence" of this process matter to us, began its activities as one of the first storefront arts paces in The Lower East compared to its modes, which, as for them, are perfectly historical? Side of ( 1979-1981 ). Group Material continues to organize art Whether or not the child is born with ease or difficulty, whether or not shows outside of the mainstream: from showing over a hundred artists' works his birth causes suffering to his mother, whether or not he is on the public subways of New York (SUBCULTURE), to posting the opinions threatened by a high mortality rate, whether or not such and such a of pedestrians at. a scale visibly clear across New York's Union Square type of future is open to him: this is what your Exhibitions should be (DAZIBAOS). telling people, instead of an eternal lyricism of birth.** Group Material brings together contradictory visual objects in order to investigate a theme. Through a strategy of precise and innovative exhibition design, Group Material demonstrates how art is dependent on a social context for its meaning. TIMELINE arranged contemporary art, indigenous raw "MASS" was conceived by Group Material in 1985 in response to some materials, and historical artifacts into a visual chronology of U.S. intervention current buzzwords often used to describe the contemporary art scene-"hot," in this hemisphere. AMERICANA transformed the museum gallery into an "expressionist," "heroic," "violent," "adventurous," and "raw." In opposition to arena of combat between the champions and the critics of the traditional these, Group Material proposed a different spelling of contemporary American self image. culture-"MASS." To this end, Group Material invited almost two hundred artists to contribute an image of their own: a photograph, a record cover, or an advertisement-to offer literally a signifier which would become the signified "MASS," a twelve-by-forty-foot word which also functions as an Group Material is Julie Ault, Mundy McLaughlin, Tim Rollins, and Doug image, a concept, a representation, and finally, a collaboration. Ashford.