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Conceptual art developed in times when the word globalization didn’t even exist and in places and societies as different as Düsseldorf, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Sidney, New York and Rio de Janeiro, just to name a few. Far from being a homogenous and univocal movement, it was comprised of diverse approaches to an aesthetic practice that sought to question, not only the object of art, but also the whole system in which it existed and circulated. Perhaps because of all that, “conceptual art,” became one of the most misused terms in the artistic field.
For conceptual artists, the idea was the thing itself. The material form came afterward — sometimes ephemeral, poorly made or even dematerialized completely. Conceptual art sought to escape its cultural confinement, ran away from the ivory walls of the museum as a legitimating institution and rethought its methods of presentation, distribution and consumption. Conceptual artists distrusted the value of the commodity and wanted to reshape their world — the world of art — into a more democratic institution.
Detail of 14 AGO 1968 by On Kawara. Photo by Ariel Authier
Divided into four rooms at Fundación Proa and curated by Rodrigo Alonso, Systems, Actions and Processes 1965-1975 partially follows up the investigation that began with Imán Nueva York which exactly one year ago occupied the same rooms. While the latter show explored the relationships, influences and productions of the 60s through the work of Argentine artists who had moved to New York City, this one has a wider international focus and explores the breakout of conceptual art in the decade following 1965.
Leopoldo Maler's Homenaje (Homage). Photo by Ariel Authier
Featuring over a hundred drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and recordings of performances and artistic actions from both Argentine and international artists, the show doesn’t focus on a historical timeline, but instead builds connections between the different pieces and different artists via their unifying themes. Each hall at Proa concentrates on a single aspect: the formal investigations, the actions outside art’s traditional limits, the primacy of concept over matter and the relation between art and society.
Detail of John Baldessari's "Throwing three balls in the air (best of thirty-six attempts)". Photo by Ariel Authier
The first hall functions as an introduction, beginning with Raúl Lozza’s Obra n°442. Lozza based his compositions on mathematical formulas and a rational use of color that abandoned the spontaneity that characterized the pictorial creations of the 1950s. Next to Obra n°442, a table displays On Kawara’s famous “date paintings” exhibited with their accompanying boxes. On another wall hangs Alberto Greco’s Vivo dito at Piedralaves — a group of seventeen photographs documenting the artist as he points at people, objects or animals. It’s a simple gesture intended to convert each into an artwork: “To teach; to see not with a painting, but with a finger,” as the artist once remarked.
Bruce Nauman's "Study for Hologram". Photo by Ariel Authier
But if the first room contains the keys to the exhibition, some of its problems arise there as well. Many conceptual pieces might at first sight appear somehow hermetic, dry or even boring. But most of them disguise a sharp sense of humor and nothing can be further from their intentions than to be solemnly framed in a traditional exhibition. Some good examples of this humor are the pieces by John Baldessari. Both his Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get A Straight Line (Best of Thirty-Six Attempts) and the video I Am Making Art play with an absurdity and wit that recalls the spirit of Samuel Beckett. Similar things happen in the works by Bruce Nauman, Bas Jan Ader, Douglas Huebler and many others in this show. The problem might be that, in this almost taxonomical environment, it takes a great effort to find that brittle humor, which is fundamental, in my view.
Installation view of Mel Bochner's "Measurement: Plant (Palm) and Dan Graham's "From Sunset to Sunrise". Photo by Ariel Authier
On the other hand, when it becomes quite difficult to hear Baldessari’s softly singing I-a-m-m-a-k-i-n-g-a-r-t while he mimics the letters with his arms, the video loses a great deal of its sense. Further, it does not really matter how big the plasma screen is showing Gordon Matta-Clark’s Day’s End — a 20-minute super 8 film cannot be fully enjoyed in that way. Needless to say, the adequate display of audiovisual work is not a problem restricted to this exhibition — not even to Proa only — it seems to be an endemic disease here in Argentina. But in an exhibit where the art concerns itself with systems of presentation, these failures seem a bit paradoxical.
Detail of Victor Grippo's "Energía vegetal" (Vegetal energy). Photo by Ariel Authier
Systems, Actions and Processes contains several indispensable artworks that redefined art’s limits and possibilities. For instance, radical experiments such as Happening para un jabalí difunto (Happening For A Dead Wild Boar) by Roberto Jacoby, Raúl Escari and Eduardo Costa and the matter-of-fact photographic reports by Dan Graham question the mass media while employing its methods. From the utopian marriage between art and life in the earthly works by Victor Grippo to the opposition between nature and rational systems in Mel Bochner‘s, from the subversive insertions in ideological circuits of consumption by Cildo Meireles, through the more explicit political work, such as the project hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (Towards a Profile of Latin American Art) organized by Jorge Glusberg, conceptual art has been an art that faced politics, not just to make political art, but to make art politically, completely rethinking its forms.
Cildo Meireles' "Insertions in Ideological Circuits. Coca-Cola Project". Photo by Ariel Authier
The book — printed matter — was one of the formats favored by many of these artists, and without a doubt the exhibition’s catalog adds value far beyond simple documentation. In it, besides a list of the work in the show, the curator has included theoretical texts, historical documents and manifestos that provide a wider and deeper context of conceptual art’s busiest decade. As a complementary activity on August 25th and 26th, Proa will host a symposium featuring several specialists in the field. Among others, Alexander Alberro and Cristina Freire will participate in discussions along with many artists from the exhibition. These two formats — the book and the event — make more sense than four white walls as means to explore and rediscover an artistic practice that redefined the status of art and its function within society. Conceptual art left a lot of questions and problems that, almost fifty years after its first manifestations, still beg for answers.
Detail of Cildo Meireles's "Insertions in Ideological Circuits. Coca-Cola Project". Photo by Ariel Authier
