The contemporary public
art institution is a storehouse of knowledge and artwork
of the present day and recent past, an immeasurable aggregate of
the multiple experiences and stories of artists and their works,
respective audiences, as well as all people involved. Differentiated
from a ‘collection’ by virtue of being the documentation
of an exhibition, performance or event rather than the artwork
itself, a gallery archive is a record of past proceedings and
consists of related materials such as names, dates, photos,
pictures, descriptions, essays, didactic materials, posters,
displays, and invitations.
As a rational system, mainstream notions of a successful
archive privilege logic and accessibility over the flow of
personal memory, emotion and imagination. Skeptical of a static and
objectifying point of view, One Brief Moment invites
artists to review apexart’s archive to interpret, speculate,
add to and imagine their own understanding of what these
materials represent. New works will be produced specifically
for this exhibition and will include video, sculptural and conceptually-based
projects.
Rather than proposing a circumscribed and singular definition
of an archive, the exhibition turns this infrastructure over
to artists and creates ways in which they have agency over
its shape and conception. Exploring alternatives to the stories
traditionally contained within, these artists introduce subjective,
incomplete or even discontinuous perspectives, considered
from both the past and the future. By privileging an expanded
field of narratives, One Brief Moment
reexamines the Institution’s traditionally asymmetrical relationship
to authority and knowledge, opening up the consideration that readings based
on conjecture or ephemeral experience form as important an aspect of an
institutions' history as the sobering distance of the relationships
already formalized within its archive.
apexart's exhibitions
and public programs are supported in part by The Peter Norton
Family Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Art and with
public funds from the New York Department of Cultural Affairs,
and the New York State Council on the Arts. This exhibition
received support from The British Council and IFA: Institut
fuer Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. |