Jorge Pardo with Lynne Cooke: Four Acts in One Cube

8/6/2019 Jorge Pardo with Lynne Cooke: Four Acts in One Cube

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Jorge Pardowith LynneCooke

Jessica Stockholder 2003 JESSICA STOCKHOLDER


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Jorge Pardowith Lynne Cooke:Four Acts in One Cube

S ince i became aware of Pardos work,it has mattered to me. Te questionsraised and problems struggled with inhis work enter into dialogue with myown. In art generally, I look for things that are, specific, and surprising.I love work that opens up new avenues of thought, and that helps meto make sense of the world in ways that are expansive. I value workthat enables experience that Im left to wrestle with, over work thatattempts to dictate the terms of my experience. Pardos work here at

Dia has done that, and it has been richly provocative, extraordinarilybeautiful, pleasurable and also annoying.I would like to address this work of Pardos as if it were a play in a

theatre. I understand the construction of the theater and the four actsthat it has contained over the last three years to be one work, unfold-ing in time. Tough Lynne Cookes name has not been on the walltogether with Pardos, at certain junctures perhaps it should havebeen. I will expand on this as I move along.

Writing is one of the more difficult things I do. No body, no stuff tomove around, just thoughts in a cloud unattached to anything thats


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touchable. Toughts so easily get lost. Teir relationship to the worldoutside of themselves is not tangible the way paint, wood, plaster orfurniture are. Tese words on the page only function as code forthoughts floating in mind. In the studio, material, things, and stufffunction as code to decipher but in the studio there is also, and per-haps primarily, tangible experience, in time, together with physicalpleasure. My bodys appetites are spoken to. Nevertheless, I do findthat this very hard work of putting words to my experience matters,feeding back into the meandering that engages me in the studio.

I, like Miwon Kwon who spoke about the first act in this play, enjoy thiswork. It gives me pleasure. I, however, find this pleasure to be signifi-cant and at the heart of why the work matters. It feeds my appetites.We are not human without our appetites. Tey make us vulnerable.Pardos work speaks to our emotional, intellectual, and practical needsto have the bodys appetites engaged, ordered, and made sense of.Te series of exhibitions staged in this gallery bring to mind many

questions about how my need for pleasure is managed, packaged, andmanipulated by the economy both inside and outside of this room. Atthe same time my experience with this work feeds me some of what Ineed to live day to day. Its like having a good meal. I feel pleasured,satiated and entertained; the stories told here function to ritualizesome of the details of my life.

I have understood my own work, and I understand Pardos, as growing

from a dialogue that I first found articulated in print in the Te WhiteCubepublished in 1976 by Brian ODoherety (also known as PatrickIreland.) In those essays ODoherety articulates the ways in which artconventions are in dialogue with the particularity of context. He nar-rates the story of a battle between contemporary art and its bracket,or container, the battle with, and banishment of the frame, extremeconcern for the edge and the demise of the pedestal. He describes ahistory where art objects in their struggle to transcend their ownboundaries fall into the white cube gallery that is posed as neutral. He

then goes on to unmask this neutrality revealing the white walls ofgalleries and museums to be full of the values and ambitions of the

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institutions that built them. More recently, Miwon Kwons book OnePlace after Anotherpublished in 2002 has carried on the trajectory ofODoheretys narrative and updated it taking account of this narrativeas it is expressed today with an expanded notion of what context is.

Te narrative put forward by both of these authors, more than thewriting of many others, has contributed to how I articulate my ownwork. I am, however, in the end confused by the polarity both writersexpress, between, the good, radical, left wing artist who challenges thebad, conservative, right wing institution. Within this narrative the pol-

itics of all avant-garde artists are assumed to be the same, and Artalways loses its battle with the institution as it is co-opted and defused.

Tis battle is core to contemporary art and, I find it riveting, rich,and full of intensity both as it plays out practically and in terms ofmetaphor. But, it doesnt make sense to pin the artist as the radical,the moneyed supporters of art, along with the institutions, as the con-servatives, and the curator as stuck somewhere in-between. I dontsee that any of us actors play fixed or single roles. I would rather

acknowledge that we, in the art world have varied politics, and that weare, all of us, trying to make sense of the relationship between thelarger shared frameworks we work within, (i.e. the painting frame, thepedestal, the white cube, the museum, various texts etc.). Te chargedand poignant subject matter of contemporary art is generated by thepersonal, idiosyncratic gesture of the individual and how that meetsthe structures, one might even say power structures, that by linkingour expressions one to the other, in the present, and through time,

give our output coherence. We are all in this soup together and wedont stand to win or loose by ourselves. I, for one, am very concernedabout the edge. Te edges between us, and how we manage them areat the heart of how and why we live, and if we can manage to stayalive on this planet. It makes more sense to view the various forces ofthe battle as threads in a tapestry.

I find this work of Pardos to be engaged in a struggle with its con-text in ways that are rich and varied. Tis work is both radical and con-servative. It is in love with design and style, and it is now part of the

architecture of Dia. It conveys the personal vision of Pardo but eclipseshis own hand. It is the work of a maverick small businessperson filling

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a need, a very eccentric vaguely articulated need that this space befilled. It seems that Pardo is a designer, a curator, and an architect,though he insists that he is an artist. Tere is much confusion as to howall these roles meet one another, and just where the edges arebetween them. Tis deliberate confusion posed as subject matter con-tributes to its being art. o the degree that the work acts as a vehiclefor eccentric aims and behaves as metaphor for the thought and visionof one person it is art. Art expresses the ideas, feelings, and attitudes ofindividuals, and as such it is distinct from propaganda.

Tis work is the space I walk in; it moves my thinking around andabout; my mind doesnt stand still. But, each time I come in here, formy eyes, feet, hands and moving body the work is tangible, static, andclearly right here with me. On the other hand, I understand this work toconsist of a series of events that have taken place in this room sequen-tially. From that point of view the work becomes a bit filmic; or like asitcom on television. It has installments that unfold over time. Te

work is posed doubly as a static object and as a fluid time based event.It participates in a dialogue with work that has come before it (Judd,Richter, Agnes Martin, Mondrian all come to mind among others,) workthat is posed as unchanging, as time flows and life changes around it.Tis very comforting fiction about stasis is often posed by visual art;that it lasts forever and poses timeless truth. Tough each installmentof Pardos work has been fairly long by Chelsea exhibition standards, itis clear that nothing about this work is permanent; even the tile walls

will likely soon yield to the next show. Tis impermanence in the workjoined to the more traditional history of static unchanging objects inart, has a new flavor about it. It is true that all art exhibitions share anelement of this experience; but it is not often embraced as central tothe story being told.

Impermanence is bitter sweet. It is clear that nothing lasts foreverand that the hardest rock does change and disappear over time.However, the impermanence in Pardos work reflects a truth aboutthe world we are making; we (the big We as expressed by our politics

and economy,) are very busy constructing a disposable world aroundourselves; a world where, even our buildings are planned to be short


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lived. Te skins of everything around us change constantly to keep upwith the styles posed by cars, clothes, and the housings of our elec-tronic tools, gadgets, and toys. Te housings are now as important asthe machinery inside. SYLE AND DESIGN takes precedence. Tere is, ofcourse, also excitement, and enormous pleasure generated with therealization that our circumstances are so primed for change andgrowth, and that our physical reality might be so fluid and flexible.Perhaps this fluidity demonstrated in the things around us might haveimplications for our mortal bodies. Maybe we can live forever.

Te Renovation, or the gallery,or the stage

Cooke invited Pardo to design the renovation of Dias bookstore, ticket

counter and ground floor gallery. Tis renovation links all three func-tions so that there is not clear boundary between them. Te previouswhite cube design of this space was nestled comfortably within theethos of the factory workspace. It both altered and co-opted thatspace. It couldnt help but be romantic and filled with nostalgia for thelabor of factory work in the process. Tis renovation in contrast, takeshold of the reins and proposes a particular more eccentric, more con-temporary or current frame for the activity that takes place here. Tis

is not a space built for another purpose and co-opted, but rather it isa very particular, charged eccentric and evocative interior. An interiorthat is reflective of Pardos subjectivity, and of his personal sense ofpleasure. At the same time it evokes the interior decorating of malls,fairs, and high-end clothing stores.

Te bookstore sets a tone that permeates the whole first floor. It isat once domestic in feel and public. Its very comfortable to sit in thebookstore. In some ways it is as if Pardo has brought his living roominto Dia and proposed it as the perfect container for commerce and art.

It is like an oasis in the middle of Chelsea it provides a break from theintense commerce that is everywhere mixed up with art outside these


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doors. Its ironic to feel that way inside, what is clearly, a store. It seemslike a gift to sit there. Nice music playing; beautiful; warm; comfort-able; inviting; furniture; and color bouncing around everywhere. Tetiles do that. Perhaps commerce doesnt have to be divorced from thevaluing of human life.

Tis eccentric container is itself contained by this old industrialbuilding which has so comfortably housed the works that Dia is knowfor collecting. Minimalism was produced in dialogue with the industrialproduction of the time. Artists had studios in buildings like this one.

Artists produced their work with material that they handled, andthe artwork was clearly an object separate from the architecture, andmobile or so we thought. Minimalism opened the door to theatrical-ity in art, as described by Michael Fried, and it turned all of our heads tothe space next to the art work; the space our bodies occupy and thento the buildings housing the work. Now it seems as if minimalism needsthis kind of old factory space and so we have Dia Beacon. In so far asPardos work is in dialogue with minimalism. It makes sense to see it

here housed by Dias history, and by this defunct industrial building. Hiswork exists in the space between the object, the architecture and theinstitution, in the space opened up by minimalism. Te redesigning, orredecorating, of this space speaks to the shift in means of productionin the west and how art intersects that shift. Te gap between Pardoand the production of his work mirrors the exportation of the produc-tion of our goods to Hong Kong and India.

Pardo designed this gallery/bookstore/museum entrance. Some

trades people built it, or perhaps some other artists who work here atDia did. Tey built this shell inside the white cube as a proposal for analternative to the white cube. An alternative that poses an individualssubjective notion about another kind of structure to hold art. Tis roomis surfaced with tiles. It all fits right into normal home and buildingconstruction practices. Tere are no eccentric means employed to thiseccentric end.

Te tiles were manufactured in Mexico by craftspeople whosenames we dont know. Tey are beautiful and desirable; I would like

them in my house too. Mary Heilmann, a NY artist, uses this same craftto make her tiles. I love her tiles; they too are beautiful and desirable.


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But hers are framed quite differently. Tey are seen alone surroundedby white wall that serves to highlight and underline them. As a resultthey become active as characters, full of line and gesture. Tey func-tion as locations for a kind of narrative that points back at their author.Te Mexican tiles are here used as raw material.

Pardos design of this new cube for art is, perhaps, the mostprovocative part of the play, more provocative than the series ofexhibitions that have taken place within it. He and Cooke together haveproposed an alternative to the white cube as a container for art.

Cooke as the curator is responsible for the structure of the exhibitionspace. Here she invited Pardo to take over, or collaborate with her andpropose a radical change to the nature of the art bracket. Te job of thecurator moves between structuring venues for art and responding tothe needs proposed by the art. Te curator is thus moving betweenroles, between being creative, like the artist, and being a facilitator forthe artist. Te artist too moves between roles, filling a need as posed bythe curator and insisting on new circumstances as demanded by the

progress of the work. Te relationship between the two parties andthese four different roles is of course complex and convoluted. It is fur-ther complicated by how these roles are socially valued.

Te artist occupies a peculiar place in class structure. Working withour hands we are laborers. But we also often find ourselves in the posi-tion of boss over other laborers working for us. Unlike the curator whorarely gets his hands dirty mucking around with the physical world, theartist often does. As we artists gain recognition we often decide to

keep our hands clean. Pardo has made this choice. Historically, artmaking has been tied to working with material. Working with materialis a kind of thinking; a thinking that is full of richness and operatesquite differently from thought generated while seated at a desk. Deskthinking floats free from the resistance and logic of time and space inthe material world. Te two kinds of thinking need not be divorcedfrom one another. It is tragic that the rich thinking that grows fromphysical labor has been relegated to the bottom rung of our ladder.Te artist functions at once as a dirty dclass laborer and as a god.

Either way the discomfort associated with mucking about in the dirt ispushed far away.


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Given this class structure it is not surprising that artists, like every-one else, desiring success, often hire out the production of the prod-uct thereby mirroring the means of production this country thriveson. Te artist with clean hands is left designing and currating.Nevertheless, the role of art remains eccentric, ever changing, andunpredictable, making it necessary to spend time gazing at the linesbetween art, design, and architecture more than ever before. Teclashing of roles played by people and objects in the various move-ments and unfolding of time in this space, that Pardo has orches-

trated, enables rich, and rewarding gazing. I use that word, gazing,with some pleasure, aware of the weight it carries in relation toLacanian discourse about the imaging of women. Our vision is hereweighted, in relation to the pleasure it affords us, and in relation tohow looking is intertwined with our appetites. From a hedonistic pointof view, these appetites are necessary to good living. Tis weightedgazing is here brought to bear on our mechanisms of economic sur-vival as demonstrated by Jorge Pardo, the person, the entrepreneur,

and the artist full of expression. We are after all in his sales room; theroom that is presenting his product and advertising what he might dofor others. We are appreciating and engaging in how he makes sense ofthe world. And we are simultaneously presented a room that proposesan absence of personal expression, and rather contains a layering ofstyle and design emanating from a myriad of producers, some namedand others unnamed. Our gaze moves heavily over manipulated evo-cations of style wafting off of the economic machinery that we all par-

ticipate in, out of necessity, and by choice, and often, with pleasure.i.e. Buying cars, decorating our homes, engaging in hobbies.

Art making seems to reflect the means of production, particularly insculpture; given the difficulty of defining sculpture now, perhaps thatcould serve as part of its definition. We are further removed from howthe things we need and use are made then ever before. Most of usdont understand how a computer works. Our cars are full of littlecomputer parts. Hi-tech machines and materials surround us. Tat

we can speak to each other on cell phones and that whole essays andpictures travel from my computer to my AirPort 15 feet away is


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unspeakably amazing. I have no idea how it works. (Why not believe inlife after death given this amazing demonstration of incomprehensibleoccurrence!) Hand made things have become quaint. Where does thatleave art making?

Art making, has traditionally been the placeholder for the continu-ation of learning through making that we all engage in as children. Weneed this part of our human selves to be reflected in the culture or weare left in a very awkward relation to our bodies.

Artists used to be understood as craftspeople. Art was an object madeby hand. Perhaps art was the repository of the more eccentricimpulses generated by making in the flow of making the things neededfor life - soap, toys, furniture, houses, all made by people locally withavailable materials. Now we are aware of very little, if any, of the mak-ing of what we need. It happens elsewhere, often overseas. Tere aredefinitely politics to how things are made. We have many thingsbecause we dont pay for them what we would charge if we were the

makers. It is of course a great pleasure to have all these things and tobe able to engage with such an enormous pool of significance andstimulation in the stuff around us. But it is also painful to be so divorcedfrom the making of things and from those others who make our things.Our art today reflects this distance. And so, a lot of art seems to be, onthe face of it, not about making; it is more curatorial in its impulse. ocollect a bunch of things and arrange them is a respected form ofactivity across the board. Art is mirroring our lack of production.

Instead of using labor and skill, time and sweat, and hands and bodyto make objects, now many of us, instead, like the corporations andpaper pushers around us, buy from others and direct the orchestrationof material in space. We have become curators of objects bracketed offin the exhibition space. And often, art is no longer so far removed fromthe world outside the door. In the absence of understanding howthings work, style and design have become tremendously importantand often divorced from function. So the two, design and art movecloser together from both sides of the divide. And the space that

Pardos work sits in gets smaller and smaller.


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Act I Project, 2000(September 13, 2000 June 2002)

For the first act in this series of four exhibitions Pardo placed someobjects in what is now his space. He placed a 1995 Volkswagen Beetleprototype made of clay, and a wardrobe designed by Alvar Aalto.

Pardo in that first act, currated the exhibition of those two objects in

relation to his own peculiar exhibition space. Because Pardos redesignof the exhibition space has been proposed as an event separate fromthe exhibitions it contains, some currated by Pardo and some by Cooke,the curatorial gesture has been given greater weight. Tat the playtakes place under the auspices of Dia also gives it weight.

Te Volkswagen prototype, made of clay is curious in this contextbecause it is a hand made object. It is a one of a kind thing...just as weassume art objects are. But its also the prototype for a car. A con-

sumer good produced in enormous quantities. We are urged both toexpress our uniqueness and to align ourselves with others by buyingthis car. Te design of the car aims to provoke our desire. Like Pardosdesign of this exhibition space, and like his lamps in the gift shop, itgives us pleasure.

Alvar Aalto, a well-known architect, designed the cabinet. Part ofwhat this cabinet brings with it into Pardos gallery is a pointing to thecrossing from one discipline into another that Aalto engaged in, and

mirrors that slippage between disciplines in Pardos work. Te Aaltocabinet and Pardos lights have a similar function in the world. I spentsome time looking at Aaltos work as I was preparing this lecture and Iimagine that Pardo feels some affinity to his work, that he is one ofPardos influences.

Te mural paintings on the walls of the gallery and the bookstoreseem to function independently of the objects. Tey are computergenerated, and thereby distanced from the hand and the body. Tey atonce look like paintings, and like graphic logos or signs. Perhaps

they are signs for paintings. Perhaps they exist in the same ballparkwith Laura Owens or Clifford Still; and maybe not. Tey are signs adver-


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tising the show. Maybe they are logos for the maverick business, forthe Pardo store. I like them but they are floating too high above myhead to focus on. Tey are in both the store and the exhibition space,suggesting yet again sameness between the functions of the two. Teyhint at an experience of overload as found in the supermarket, orimes Square, in this space which is otherwise quiet, calm, andenabling of contemplation.

Tis tiled exhibition space, the Volkswagen prototype, the Aalto

wardrobe, Pardos mural paintings, and the glass lights in the book-store, each in their own way collapse the private personal impulse tomake things with shared conventions and public space. akentogether, the collection of these gestures is aimed at the individualsituated within a large public audience, all of us together are involvedin the consumption of mass produced goods, even while we are drawntowards an appreciation for, interest in and maybe even valuing of theperson alone with one small vulnerable and eccentric body.

Act II Reverb(September 19, 2001 June 16, 2002)

Cooke again invited Pardo to make something in this tiled space, this

time in relation to Gilberto Zorios work from 1969. Pardo was notinvolved in this curatorial gesture. He made some curtains. Tese,though they are sculptures are also an architectural element. Teyrecurtains. Tey make me think of Jasper Johns flag painting as they posethe question, are they curtains or representations of curtains?

Te work of these two artists was contained by the eccentric sub-jectivity of Pardos cube, in place of the white cube we are accustomedto. What an outlandish curatorial idea! Perhaps the authority Dia hasaccrued muffles the playful wackiness of this gesture. We all take it

very seriously. Because there are only three parts, or players in thisexhibition, unlike the Utopia Station show in the Venice Biennale this


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past summer, there is clarity about the space between them, evenwhile they are absurdly mixed up together. Within the context of thisplay Four Acts in One Cube, Cookes curatorial gesture here in Act II,is on par with Pardos curatorial gestures from Act I. At this juncture,Cooke and Pardo are engaged in very similar activity.

Act III Refraction

(September 4, 2002 June 15, 2003)

Cooke invited Gerhard Richter to show some of his work spanning from1966 through 2002. Pardo was not involved in this curatorial gestureand the show did not include any of his objects. Richter presumablymade this body of work with the white cube in mind, consciously orunconsciously, as we all do. Tis work was not made with this space in

mind or conceived of as a show. We are in the habit of focusingintensely on the show, as opposed to the single and individual workswithin it. A focus that has grown from the dialogue between the art-work and the space as spawned by Minimalism

And yet, as Richters work is not about color, it was not disrupted bythe intensity of color in this space. In fact it was not disrupted at all. Itseemed to be quite self-contained; I imagine that this work couldfunction in many different kinds of space. It seemed not to participate

in a dialogue with the history of minimalism as outlined above. I tookgreat pleasure in this Act of the play. It was wonderful to have the airtaken out of my sails. As I traveled down the white cube conversationstream; it all of a sudden seemed to matter not at all what the contextof the work was. Te rug was pulled out from under my feet. Richterswork creates and explores the private obsessions of one single personand makes them available to me. It seems direct, like reading a book;the form is taken for granted. Cookes decision to put this work in thisspace opened the door for our conversation to take another turn.

Might it be possible for us to find some conclusion or stasis in this bat-tle between art and its context? Or perhaps, the degree to which


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Richters work is at once so embracing of its surroundings and at thesame time, independent from them, is indicative of an alternativestrategy. Tis work functions like the glass partition between thebookstore and the gallery. It straddles the neutral space that has beenassumed for it and the fullness of the space we find it in, while main-taining a coherent sense of wholeness.

Act IV Prototype(September 17, 2003 January 11, 2004)

Pardo is once again invited by Cooke to put some work into this space,the particularity of which they together arrived at. During what mightbe the final act of this play, there are changes within the gallery/showroom during the course of the exhibition. We are privy to the artists

process. Is this indicative of the process being valued, harkening backin time? Im not sure; or perhaps Pardo has become so comfortableoccupying this space that he has had access to for three years, that heis treating it as his studio.

Te first time I came to see this show there was a little bit of this kitstructure and there were some lamps on the floor. Tey formed a cir-cle of glass on the floor; they seemed odd, vulnerable, and out of place.If I remember correctly, they were not working lamps. Tey seemed

arbitrarily plopped down as placeholders for something. Tey func-tioned like a fireplace, or as an alter in a temple, as an alter to designand craft, and perhaps to the missing hand made thing. Tey were lus-cious, vivid and full of allure but alone in the space. In some ways theselamps and the graphics on the wall act as cartoons of expression intheir relationship to being exhibited. Te curtain, this time painted onthe walls of the gallery, uses four different colors of green, all of themdifferent from the three colors of green in the tile. Te floor and the wallare clashing with each other; they are superbly odd. wo systems that

dont sit well together at all. Both are modular as is the kit creature


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looming over me. Te curtain of paint is not beautiful. Its like a car-toon. A cartoon of expression. Of the hand made.

Tis painted curtain now obscures the view through the glass par-tition separating Pardos work, the things he made, from the book-store. My experience in the gallery space is now more internal; mygaze is not directed outward. Tere is an emphasis on fiction. Tepainted curtain is not also a real curtain as it was in Act II. Te kitmonster/house is alive with quirky narratives played out against thebackdrop of the painted and tiled set. Te kit is like real life Lego for

grownups. Here, this time, Pardo is not contrasting his own productswith those of other people. He is inviting us whole-heartedly into hisown place of narrative.

Te next time I come to see the show I find the glass lamps are goneand this kit structure is more developed. It is like a big animal or amodel for a dinosaur. It, like the curtain, is made up of planes. Its likea drawing; its portable and reproducible. It is like an eccentric Ikeaproduct. Te design world that this work grows out of places high value

on the skill and craft that have become suspect when expressed by thehands of a lone artist.

I, of course, enjoy the relationships between the flat painted curtainand the real curtain in the back office. I am startled by the bit of paintedcurtain that runs over one plane of this animal house structure. Alltogether, my experience in the gallery now is filled with a bit of nostal-gia for all that has passed here. In contrast to visiting the PierreHuyigue show upstairs, experiencing this work is now like putting on

worn cloths.

Art is alive; it is an activity just like getting to work every day, Art andmaking sure that the subways work and the roads are maintainedcontribute to our sense of well being. It is of the moment. It has valueright now. It contributes to describing our world for us so that we knowwhat to do everyday. It is easy to lose sight of this very immediatefunction that art has when we are busy judging it and struggling tounderstand it as valuable historically. We, all of us, strive for genius; we

want to make the best, be the best, own the best, and know the best.Maybe in the end thats not what is most important in art.


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Im sure making things original or having original thoughts cant bethe ultimate end. Nevertheless, I continue to judge works of art fortheir originality. Tere is, however, a difference between what is newfor me, what the culture experiences as new, and what is actually new.Each one of us moves through life beginning as young, nave, andunknowing, we move through to middle age and, and then, thoughIm finding it hard to accept, we all die. What I find clich and over-worked may indeed provide a world opening experience for someoneelse, or visa versa. Tis cant be discounted. I dont believe in progress.

Art isnt better now than it was a hundred years ago. Art serves individ-uals on our journeys through life. Our notion that art should changeseason to season and continue to be always new, mirrors and feedscapitalist economy, and at the same time stresses our connections toone another, acting as cultural glue.

Te complexity raised by the layering of roles and references in thisPardo Play opens up some room for the author to be just a person livingamongst the contradictions the work evokes, not a genius on a pedestal.

o Conclude

An artist, one person, one subject, arranges things in the gallery. Ifsomeone else makes these things, that persons name tends not to be

on the wall of the gallery, just the artists. Te value of what the artistdoes is understood as an orchestration of significance. I am loath to saythat we dont value making, or that we dont understand it to be full ofsignificance in its own right. Tat is not exactly true. It is true, however,that there is enormous tension and struggle around the question ofhow we are to value craft in art. Should art embody technical skill?How do we determine if something is well made? What is the differencebetween art and craft? Do we look to the trades; should it be madelike a kitchen cabinet? Or is something well made when it appears to be

machined with no evidence of the hand. And how do we enjoy the evi-dence of our hands making, embodied by objects, without having


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them become quaint and primitive seeming? Perhaps abstractexpressionism has become taboo in light of this struggle. o discountabstract expressionism as self-involved and exclusive of the largerworld seems to be itself a very conservative gesture devaluing theindividual in favor of the collective.

Nevertheless, we celebrate the work of individuals, show the work ofindividuals and experience ourselves as individuals. I wonder why then,so much of the discussion around contemporary art is focused on a

reluctance to allow or recognize the expression of the individual.Clearly, any exciting work transcends the life of the individual whomade it, and becomes engaged with the world in communication thatis shared by many, or at least some others. Our stories are necessarilynot ourselves. Te story is already removed from the flow of livedexperience. Since I have been engaged in this conversation that is art,my respected teachers and peers have described abstract expression-ism as resting on a deluded notion. Tat anyone else should care about

the personal expression or feelings of the artist has been posed asridiculous. However, in light of the fact that we still anoint the gallerywall with the artists name, I understand the contents of the gallery tobe an expression of that person. Whether the gestures contained bythe white cube reflect the hand and body of the artist or just the mindseems not to impinge on how personal a gesture it is. It is the gestureof a single person indicative of what that person cares about and howthey think. In modern western culture we place high value on individ-

uality. Democracy rests on this value. One of the most pressing andengaging themes running through contemporary culture expressesthe struggle to make sense of individuals as free thinking, free willedentities that are nevertheless nothing without the web of history andinfrastructure that we all share. Art as we know it, kept bracketed inthe flow of life within the white cube, is the expression of individualthought. Art within the white cube is engaging, compelling, some-times threatening, and most wonderful precisely because it is able toembody the most outrageous eccentric individual expression.

I love eccentricity; and I need it to be valued. I find it compelling tonotice that the individual as defined in contemporary western culture


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expresses an extraordinary moment in history. Tough each of us hasgrown up with this notion, it is in fact still a very young, brand newidea. Our sense of ourselves as individual is of central importance to artmaking, particularly in the visual arts; and yet, I also love being witnessto and participating in the ongoing rich and spicy struggle of contem-porary sculpture with the white cube. Te struggle between the indi-vidual art object and the layers of brackets that surround it, thepedestal, the frame, the white, cube, the curator, the institution, themagazine, the television etc., are freighted with metaphors that are

pivotal to our quickly changing political order.In this play Jorge Pardo was the driving force; his was the pri-

mary name on the wall. But there were countless other named andunnamed people responsible for the raw material, that became thesubject of Pardos curatorial enterprise. And there were the otherartists, Zorio and Richter whose work was introduced to play alongside Pardos. Teir names were on the wall. And there was the work ofLynne Cooke whose name floats in the background, but her ideas and

invitations were pivotal to what happened here. She provided, ormanipulated, the Meta structure. Tere was great complexity gener-ated around the question of production and authorship.

In the end, though in my own work I hang on to the mark of theartists hand, and hearken back to cottage industry, more than Pardo,and I do not see myself in a battle with the legacy of abstract expres-sionism, contrarily perhaps I am arguing for a renewed focus on thevulnerable and private space of individual minds, I do however, find

myself fully engaged with this work and appreciative of the complex-ity brought to the questions of expression, ego, class, pleasure, desire,and consumption. And I most appreciate that this rich arena is openedup through my experience of time and space. My mind and my bodyare invited together to meander through various landscapes as I definethem in collaboration with Jorge Pardo, Lynne Cooke, and all thoseother people and expressions that they have embraced.


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Jorge Pardo with Lynne Cooke: Four Acts in One Cube

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Transcript of Jorge Pardo with Lynne Cooke: Four Acts in One Cube