Celebrations,
Broken Hearts and Autopsies
Griff
Williams interviews Michelle Grabner
My friend,
artist Michelle Grabner has recently been tasked with being one of three
curators of the upcoming 2014 Whitney Biennial. For many of us, who have
followed Grabner's career this came as thrilling and welcome news. Michelle is
a Chicago-based painter. Since 1996 she has been the professor and department
chair in the Department of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. She writes criticism for Artforum magazine, and is a contributing
editor at Xtra contemporary art quarterly. For the past 15 years she has run
The Suburban, an artist project space located in her backyard with her husband
and fellow artist, Brad Killam. They also founded and operate The Poor Farm, a
space located in Wisconsin on the site of a poor farm built in 1876. The Great
Poor Farm Experiment, or as they put it "The Suburban's rural
cousin", presents artist projects and year-long exhibitions.
Michelle
and Brad began exhibiting their work at Gallery 16 in 1998 and we are looking
forward to their fifth exhibition with the gallery in 2014. As part of our 20th
Anniversary Conversation series I posed some questions to Michelle about her
plans and challenges in curating the Biennial.
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| Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam "Down Block"2010
at Gallery 16
|
GW: Over the past decade you and I have
frequently talked about various power imbalances in the art world and your
anti-curatorial positions. And yet, here you are one of three curators for the
upcoming Whitney Biennial! Does the challenge of selecting living artists and
specific artworks for exhibition pose conflicts with your philosophical
position?
MG: Yes,
let’s take a moment for that ridiculous bit of situational irony. It is one of
the artworld’s many peculiarities: as soon as you tell it to fuck-off, it wants
your attention. But to get at your question, I will claim the high ground and
say curating the Biennial does not compromise my position. I remain critically
opposed to a very specific kind of ‘curatorial think,’ specifically that which
flows wholesale from curatorial studies programs. Jens Hoffman, a practitioner
of this type of curatorial practice describes the condition by saying,
“Exhibitions became the creative principle of so-called exhibition makers who
were described as exhibition directors and who became catalysts between the
creative individual and society.” That smells like an opportunistic middleman
to me. It is a new celebrity industry, professionalizing the curator/artist in
all of us.
But
regarding my approach to the Biennial, I will organize my part of the
exhibition by featuring artists who are dedicated to their ideas and to
contemporary artmaking. I will not deploy other artist’s work as a means to
illustrate my subjective conceits. No Themes, no thesis, no poetic title.
GW: The
Suburban's greatest success, in my estimation, is in its Midwestern humility
and your grounded value system which is at odds with careerist art-world
predilections. Your intention was not to redefine the roles of the art world
but instead champion art, artists, and their imagination without concern for
the market. Do you see your work
as an example of how artists can and must create their own value systems in
opposition to existing market driven paradigms?
MG:
Market driven value systems are a reality and I encourage artists to make use
of them if and when they are appropriate to the work. Another reality in our
artworld is that contemporary criticism is embedded within art’s commercial
enterprise. But because of the staggering number of contemporary artists and
fast money rapidly pulsing through the system, commercial success no longer
guarantees critical evaluation.
Unquestionably,
artists today have to accrue influence. That can mean a combination of
critical, institutional, and even commercial recognition. But most importantly
it demands that you gain the respect of other artists. So this means that one
must be devoted to working and to committing a long protracted life in this
work. Sure, The Suburban and the Poor Farm invert institutional power
structures and makes interfacing with art’s unseemly features tolerable. But in
the end, Brad and I just want to be close to artists of all stripes, and in
continuous proximity to their ideas, work, and processes.
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| The Suburban |
GW: I've
been interested in your comments about "community" as it relates to
your activities at the Suburban and Poor Farm and as it relates to my
experience at Gallery 16. You have said that after 15 years of operating the
Suburban "I am not convinced that a proper community has announced itself
(which might not be a bad thing.) Or conversely, its community is always being
refigured, and I just can't put a finger on it. What is certain and why I don't
dwell on the question of community is that I am an unyielding supporter and
enthusiastic viewer of every single project. So with Brad and the kids we have
a solid community of five. That is really enough." This is an important
and frequently ignored question that goes back to artists defining their own
value system irrespective of external pressures.
MG: That
is why, despite the many miles that separate Northern California from the Upper
Midwest, I feel that we are not only peers, but that we are also long-time
neighbors, sharing value systems shaped by criticality, responsibility as well
as our fondness for family. For one thing, we both choose to live in locations
that allowed us to develop and evolve our own principles for shaping our
theoretical and practical understanding art and life. I also think we are both
distinctly aware and committed to challenging the conventional frameworks we
choose to embrace. It is also a political choice to do what we do. Even if
critique is overshadowed by a bevy of freedoms afforded by today’s free market,
I still feel a profound sense of responsibility toward critical awareness
within those freedoms.
GW: Are the
curators Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and yourself collaborating or are you
working independently to develop your exhibitions?
MG: We
each get one floor of the Marcel Breuer building and we will share the
interstitial spaces offered up by the museum: lobby gallery, courtyard,
theater, etc.
GW: How
many studios do you expect to visit this year?
MG:This
year, conversations with artists will encompass much of my waking life. And as
you can imagine, studio visits are the agreeable part of the whole Biennial
process.
GW: If at
the end of this Biennial experience you have achieved your objectives, what
will that look like?
MG: I am
not interested in using this platform to “talent hunt.” Instead I am hoping to
foreground artists
who have made a life out of their dedication to art making.
GW: What
excites you most with respect to the upcoming year?
MG:
Disappearing into Elaine DeKooning’s old studio on Long Island once the
Biennial is launched next March.
GW: Now to
the broken hearts question -- given the incredible number of artists you have
worked over the years, have you had to change your phone number since you were
announced as a Biennial curator?
MG:
Nope. But my inbox is endlessly populating with unsolicited jpegs.
GW: And the
autopsy question! The art-world is strewn like a battlefield with the corpses
of previous Biennial curators. What motivates your decision to do it given it's
such a thankless job?
MG: It
didn’t even occur to me that I could say “no.” This is a big deal and a chance
to shape it from an artist’s perspective. Besides, I get to walk away from that
pile of corpses and head to my studio in hopes of someday landing on the other
pile of corpses, that of previous biennial artists.
GW: Does
the body count of former curators simply point to the inherent subjectivity of
these endeavors?
MG: Over
the years, the institution has selected curators for various reasons. Early on
in the Biennial’s history, curators were practical, in-house choices, sometimes
with advisory teams. Obviously in the recent past there was a move toward
celebrity curators with international reputations. But happily even this is
changing. In 2012 and 2014, the institution selected curators who represent the
contextual shifts going on in the contemporary art. It is not a coincidence
that none of the 2014 curators are from New York City. Regardless, there will
always be a body count as long as curators are named. The first Biennial
Exhibition (1973) was curated by its “curatorial staff.”
GW: Will
you wear your Packers knit cap to the Biennial opening?
MG: You
will see a green and gold knit cap on my noggin even if the Giants win the
Superbowl in February.
