Close Up #3: Instruction-Based Art, 50 Unrealized Artwork Recipes by Gregory Sholette
Convened, led by: Sebastian Cichocki, Kuba Szreder
Thursday, March 31, 7pm
Auditorium of the Emilia Pavilion, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Emilii Plater 51
The next meeting in the Close Up cycle is focused on instruction-based art, that is, the conceptual art genre that gained momentum after Joseph Kosuth’s famous declaration, “Art as Idea as Idea.” A number of artists including such pioneers of the genre as Lawrence Weiner and Douglas Huebler, produced laconic captions for works of art that could have but did not possess a material form. In other words, the realization was secondary to the idea presented in the caption. A radical example of the genre is Dropout Piece by Lee Lozano, through which the artist initiated the process of her own disappearance from the field of art. For Lozano, an instruction was simply that: something to be made use of. In this selfsame spirit, whole collections of conceptual instructions have been generated.
Close Up #3 will take Gregory Sholette’s 50 Unrealized Artwork Recipes as subject, a project that will be presented at the exhibition Making Use from the end of March, 2016. Sholette has decided to liberate his unrealized ideas through the publication of open and public licenses, which he has termed “Copyleft.” At present, it is possible for anybody to use any number of Sholette’s recipes: they can be explored, borrowed, tested, changed, duplicated, and distributed. This task is to be further explored through the formation of a reconstruction group led by Katarzyna Witt. Details on joining this group will be provided during the meeting.
About the cycle
Weekly meetings are an occasion to engage more closely with the processes and practices presented at the exhibition Making Use. The Close Up model is intended to examine activity that works on a 1:1 scale and to review such practices as they intersect with the various fields of life. The meetings will steer clear of the lecture format, instead adopting a more open form of discussion, seminar, and workshop. The aim of the cycle is not only to gain a more profound understanding of the practices discussed, but also to activate and contextualize them. The cycle is conceptualized and convened by the curatorial team of Making Use. Select meetings will host other participants of the project.