The performance art exhibition, which has recently been held in large art galleries, has become an accessible art genre unlike before, with separate sections created in art fairs.
BAZAAR BY BAZAAR 2017.10.17
(Marina Abramovi ́c), ‘The Cleaner’, Fine art pigment print on Hahnemühle paper, 139×139cm © Marina Abramovi ́c . Courtesy Lisson Gallery. Photography: Dawn Blackman
Today becomes yesterday and the past after passing, but on the other hand, the time in the artwork is forever. However, performance art is an art centered on the moment and space of the current act, contrary to the ‘eternity’ of ordinary artworks.
Performance art focuses on the futility of the moment and says that everything is not eternal. The performer’s gesture moves on to the next move as soon as the audience watches. What are some of the performance arts?
You will recall performances such as Yves Klein’s “Anthropometry: Princess Helena” and Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece.” In the 1960s and ’70s, performance art was the most avant-garde, direct, and anti-capitalist genre. Performance art is often thought to be the most anti-market and anti-institutional, avoiding conceptual and physical objects.
Performance art with a relatively short history of more than 100 years has recently attracted attention again. This is a reaction to the excess of the art market, and it began to be spotlighted after the 2008 global financial crisis.
Unlike the existing performance art, which was mainly violent and exaggerated gestures in the 1960s and 1970s, recent works mainly show controlled emotions. At the same time, for art lovers, performance art is rather more attractive in that there is no room for speculative attributes to artworks.
Recently, performance art exhibitions are being held in large art galleries, and it has become an easy-to-access art genre unlike before, with separate sections being created in art fairs. In June, at Art Basel, many galleries, including Donna Huanca’s “Bliss,” presented performance art as their representative works. In particular, the exhibition of 14 Rooms (14 Rooms), organized by the most influential curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the moma curator Klaus Wijenbach, became a hot topic at Art Basel in 2014.
Although not for sale, the exhibition, which was a highlight for visitors, was an opportunity to appreciate the masterpiece performance that inspired artists around the world from the 1960s to the present and the most famous performance art of the time. Freeze Art Fair has also prepared a live art section to showcase Christine Sun Kim’s “Nap Performance,” and the performance is now an indispensable place in the art fair.
Peres Projects, Donna Huanca, ‘Bliss’ © Art Basel, Courtesy Art Basel
Christine Sun Kim, Carroll/Fletcher, Live section, Frieze London 2016 Photograph by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze
Gypsum, Live section, Frieze London 2016, Photograph by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze
The Summer Exhibition, which is held annually at the Royal Academy of Art in London, is a kind of competition that is held every year from 1769 to this year. The exhibition will feature works reviewed and finally selected by the Academy Committee, focusing on Academy members.
This year’s exhibition introduced three performance arts for the first time ever. The fact that performance art appeared for the first time in history in the Summer Edition, where the exhibited works lead to sales, became a hot topic.
Although these performance works were not intended for sale, they attracted attention during the two-month exhibition period, meeting with audiences at a fixed time every week. India Mackie and Declan Jenkins, who worked as a duo artist group, introduced the work “Cantilever Kiss.” The performer tied to two A-shaped frames shook like a swing and kissed in the air. Another performance artist, Alana Francis, went around the exhibition hall and whispered her private life to the audience.
India Mackie and Declan Jenkins, ‘Cantilever Kiss’, Summer Exhibition, 2017 © Royal Academy of Arts
Despite the fact that performance art cannot be left out in exhibitions and fairs, it is still controversial that the “live” performance art, which focuses on the aesthetics of the moment, is permanently housed in the museum. This is because we need to find an answer to the essential question of how to preserve the art of the moment. In addition, performance art is a genre with a relatively short history and is contrary to the concept of preservation of existing works of art.
The theme of “Possession and Preservation of Performance Art” was discussed in Moma, New York in 2008. A long-term workshop was held to study the artists, work managers, and curators. Several art galleries are continuing their research, research projects, and workshops, with the Stedelic Museum of Art in London and Amsterdam holding workshops on the same theme. This is a topic that is constantly covered by the art fair’s forums, and through this, collectors who want to collect performance art are advised to collect performance art.
Notable among them are the establishment of an organization called Performa in New York and the exhibition “100 Years: A History of Performance Art” held at MOMA PS1 in 2009. New York’s performance is an organization founded in 2004 by Roseley Goldberg, a curator specializing in performing arts, and holds a performance art biennial that hosts more than 100 live performances, video screenings, exhibitions, lectures, and symposiums by world-class artists in more than 60 spaces in New York City every two years.
The performance, which explored the importance of the role of live performance in the history of art in the 20th century and presented a new direction for performing arts in the first half of the 21st century, created a new trend in curating.
Moma held an exhibition to commemorate the 100-year history of performance and compiled research on the record and preservation of performances that are still unfamiliar to the public and difficult. The exhibition conveyed the situation at the time of the performance by showing a century-old performance with records of videos, photos, records, and audio. The exhibition, which displayed about 200 pieces, introduced an archive that recalls performance art and established the concept of performance art.
Looking back on the history of performance art for about 100 years, artists have recorded performances that are “non-material” by making instantaneous performances into “materials.” Among them, photography is the easiest and fastest medium to record performance. The role of photography that records the moment of performance is the most important thing for us to think of the performance art that was practiced and disappeared decades ago as an image.
The moment when Eve Klein surprised people with her “human measurement” performance remains to this day with several photos. Another performance writer, Maria Abramovich, also produces a pigment print by recording the performance. As such, most art galleries and collectors have kept records of performance as pictures.
Tino Sehgal, on the other hand, is a performance writer who rejects material. Segal’s solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 2010 was a performance exhibition that broke the concept of general exhibition. The press release distributed to his private exhibition did not contain any pictures of the work, nor did he publish an exhibition catalog. What the audience could see in the museum was just the Guggenheim Museum building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. During his exhibition, a pair of men and women kissing in an empty space there were only eye-catching.
The artist refused to record through all media, but his “directed situation” was verbally delivered and sold through the artist’s mouth, limited to four to six editions, just like print or photographic work. In fact, an anecdote in which Tino Segal’s “Kiss” was traded for $70,000 after a conversation with director Moma became a hot topic in the art world. Segal does not want his performance to remain in any form or substance, so the situation of all works is stored only in memory. Purchased works are collected in memory form and, like ordinary works, can be rented at exhibitions by other institutions. Even at this time, the work is delivered only verbally.
There are more opportunities for the public to access, but collecting and exhibiting performance art is still limited. Some collectors want to keep the work of performance artists through hand-to-hand ‘touch’ records, but this is only part of the work. At the same time, it is not easy to preserve and display it. Canadian collector Bob Rennie said he had to recruit a total of 279 runners during the three months of Martin Creed’s “Work No. 850 (Runners)” exhibition at a private art museum in 2011. The work activities left unrecorded, such as Tino Segal, once again cast a big question mark on the essential question of the preservation of performance art.