Jorge Pardo

with Lynne
Cooke

Jessica Stockholder
© 2003 JESSICA S T OC KHOL DE R
Jorge Pardo
with Lynne Cooke:
Four Acts in One Cube

S ince i became aware of Pardo’s work,

it has mattered to me. The questions
raised and problems struggled with in
his work enter into dialogue with my
own. In art generally, I look for things that are, specific, and surprising.
I love work that opens up new avenues of thought, and that helps me
to make sense of the world in ways that are expansive. I value work
that enables experience that I’m left to wrestle with, over work that
attempts to dictate the terms of my experience. Pardo’s work here at
Dia has done that, and it has been richly provocative, extraordinarily
beautiful, pleasurable and also annoying.
I would like to address this work of Pardo’s as if it were a play in a
theatre. I understand the construction of the theater and the four acts
that it has contained over the last three years to be one work, unfold-
ing in time. Though Lynne Cooke’s name has not been on the wall
together with Pardo’s, at certain junctures perhaps it should have
been. I will expand on this as I move along.

Writing is one of the more difficult things I do. No body, no stuff to

move around, just thoughts in a cloud unattached to anything that’s
touchable. Thoughts so easily get lost. Their relationship to the world
outside of themselves is not tangible the way paint, wood, plaster or
furniture are. These words on the page only function as code for
thoughts floating in mind. In the studio, material, things, and stuff
function as code to decipher but in the studio there is also, and per-
haps primarily, tangible experience, in time, together with physical
pleasure. My body’s appetites are spoken to. Nevertheless, I do find
that this very hard work of putting words to my experience matters,
feeding back into the meandering that engages me in the studio.

I, like Miwon Kwon who spoke about the first act in this play, enjoy this
work. It gives me pleasure. I, however, find this pleasure to be signifi-
cant and at the heart of why the work matters. It feeds my appetites.
We are not human without our appetites. They make us vulnerable.
Pardo’s work speaks to our emotional, intellectual, and practical needs
to have the body’s appetites engaged, ordered, and made sense of.
The series of exhibitions staged in this gallery bring to mind many
questions about how my need for pleasure is managed, packaged, and
manipulated by the economy both inside and outside of this room. At
the same time my experience with this work feeds me some of what I
need to live day to day. It’s like having a good meal. I feel pleasured,
satiated and entertained; the stories told here function to ritualize
some of the details of my life.

I have understood my own work, and I understand Pardo’s, as growing

from a dialogue that I first found articulated in print in the The White
Cube published in 1976 by Brian O’Doherety (also known as Patrick
Ireland.) In those essays O’Doherety articulates the ways in which art
conventions are in dialogue with the particularity of context. He nar-
rates the story of a battle between contemporary art and it’s bracket,
or container, the battle with, and banishment of the frame, extreme
concern for the edge and the demise of the pedestal. He describes a
history where art objects in their struggle to transcend their own
boundaries fall into the white cube gallery that is posed as neutral. He
then goes on to unmask this neutrality revealing the white walls of
galleries and museums to be full of the values and ambitions of the

2
institutions that built them. More recently, Miwon Kwon’s book One
Place after Another published in 2002 has carried on the trajectory of
O’Doherety’s narrative and updated it taking account of this narrative
as it is expressed today with an expanded notion of what context is.
The narrative put forward by both of these authors, more than the
writing of many others, has contributed to how I articulate my own
work. I am, however, in the end confused by the polarity both writers
express, between, the good, radical, left wing artist who challenges the
bad, conservative, right wing institution. Within this narrative the pol-
itics of all avant-garde artists are assumed to be the same, and Art
always loses its battle with the institution as it is co-opted and defused.
This battle is core to contemporary art and, I find it riveting, rich,
and full of intensity both as it plays out practically and in terms of
metaphor. But, it doesn’t make sense to pin the artist as the radical,
the moneyed supporters of art, along with the institutions, as the con-
servatives, and the curator as stuck somewhere in-between. I don’t
see that any of us actors play fixed or single roles. I would rather
acknowledge that we, in the art world have varied politics, and that we
are, all of us, trying to make sense of the relationship between the
larger shared frameworks we work within, (i.e. the painting frame, the
pedestal, the white cube, the museum, various texts etc.). The charged
and poignant subject matter of contemporary art is generated by the
personal, idiosyncratic gesture of the individual and how that meets
the structures, one might even say power structures, that by linking
our expressions one to the other, in the present, and through time,
give our output coherence. We are all in this soup together and we
don’t stand to win or loose by ourselves. I, for one, am very concerned
about the edge. The edges between us, and how we manage them are
at the heart of how and why we live, and if we can manage to stay
alive on this planet. It makes more sense to view the various forces of
the battle as threads in a tapestry.
I find this work of Pardo’s to be engaged in a struggle with its con-
text in ways that are rich and varied. This work is both radical and con-
servative. It is in love with design and style, and it is now part of the
architecture of Dia. It conveys the personal vision of Pardo but eclipses
his own hand. It is the work of a maverick small businessperson filling

3
a need, a very eccentric vaguely articulated need that this space be
filled. It seems that Pardo is a designer, a curator, and an architect,
though he insists that he is an artist. There is much confusion as to how
all these roles meet one another, and just where the edges are
between them. This deliberate confusion posed as subject matter con-
tributes to it’s being art. To the degree that the work acts as a vehicle
for eccentric aims and behaves as metaphor for the thought and vision
of one person it is art. Art expresses the ideas, feelings, and attitudes of
individuals, and as such it is distinct from propaganda.

This work is the space I walk in; it moves my thinking around and
about; my mind doesn’t stand still. But, each time I come in here, for
my eyes, feet, hands and moving body the work is tangible, static, and
clearly right here with me. On the other hand, I understand this work to
consist of a series of events that have taken place in this room sequen-
tially. From that point of view the work becomes a bit filmic; or like a
sitcom on television. It has installments that unfold over time. The
work is posed doubly as a static object and as a fluid time based event.
It participates in a dialogue with work that has come before it (Judd,
Richter, Agnes Martin, Mondrian all come to mind among others,) work
that is posed as unchanging, as time flows and life changes around it.
This very comforting fiction about stasis is often posed by visual art;
that it lasts forever and poses timeless truth. Though each installment
of Pardo’s work has been fairly long by Chelsea exhibition standards, it
is clear that nothing about this work is permanent; even the tile walls
will likely soon yield to the next show. This impermanence in the work
joined to the more traditional history of static unchanging objects in
art, has a new flavor about it. It is true that all art exhibitions share an
element of this experience; but it is not often embraced as central to
the story being told.
Impermanence is bitter sweet. It is clear that nothing lasts forever
and that the hardest rock does change and disappear over time.
However, the impermanence in Pardo’s work reflects a truth about
the world we are making; we (the big We as expressed by our politics
and economy,) are very busy constructing a disposable world around
ourselves; a world where, even our buildings are planned to be short

4
lived. The skins of everything around us change constantly to keep up
with the styles posed by cars, clothes, and the housings of our elec-
tronic tools, gadgets, and toys. The housings are now as important as
the machinery inside. STYLE AND DESIGN takes precedence. There is, of
course, also excitement, and enormous pleasure generated with the
realization that our circumstances are so primed for change and
growth, and that our physical reality might be so fluid and flexible.
Perhaps this fluidity demonstrated in the things around us might have
implications for our mortal bodies. Maybe we can live forever.

The Renovation, or the gallery,

or the stage
Cooke invited Pardo to design the renovation of Dia’s bookstore, ticket
counter and ground floor gallery. This renovation links all three func-
tions so that there is not clear boundary between them. The previous
white cube design of this space was nestled comfortably within the
ethos of the factory workspace. It both altered and co-opted that
space. It couldn’t help but be romantic and filled with nostalgia for the
labor of factory work in the process. This renovation in contrast, takes
hold of the reins and proposes a particular more eccentric, more con-
temporary or current frame for the activity that takes place here. This
is not a space built for another purpose and co-opted, but rather it is
a very particular, charged eccentric and evocative interior. An interior
that is reflective of Pardo’s subjectivity, and of his personal sense of
pleasure. At the same time it evokes the interior decorating of malls,
fairs, and high-end clothing stores.
The bookstore sets a tone that permeates the whole first floor. It is
at once domestic in feel and public. It’s very comfortable to sit in the
bookstore. In some ways it is as if Pardo has brought his living room
into Dia and proposed it as the perfect container for commerce and art.
It is like an oasis in the middle of Chelsea — it provides a break from the
intense commerce that is everywhere mixed up with art outside these

5
doors. It’s ironic to feel that way inside, what is clearly, a store. It seems
like a gift to sit there. Nice music playing; beautiful; warm; comfort-
able; inviting; furniture; and color bouncing around everywhere. The
tiles do that. Perhaps commerce doesn’t have to be divorced from the
valuing of human life.
This eccentric container is itself contained by this old industrial
building which has so comfortably housed the works that Dia is know
for collecting. Minimalism was produced in dialogue with the industrial
production of the time. Artists had studios in buildings like this one.
Artists “produced” their work with material that they handled, and
the artwork was clearly an object separate from the architecture, and
mobile — or so we thought. Minimalism opened the door to theatrical-
ity in art, as described by Michael Fried, and it turned all of our heads to
the space next to the art work; the space our bodies occupy and then
to the buildings housing the work. Now it seems as if minimalism needs
this kind of old factory space and so we have Dia Beacon. In so far as
Pardo’s work is in dialogue with minimalism. It makes sense to see it
here housed by Dia’s history, and by this defunct industrial building. His
work exists in the space between the object, the architecture and the
institution, in the space opened up by minimalism. The redesigning, or
redecorating, of this space speaks to the shift in means of production
in the west and how art intersects that shift. The gap between Pardo
and the production of his work mirrors the exportation of the produc-
tion of our goods to Hong Kong and India.
Pardo designed this gallery/bookstore/museum entrance. Some
trades people built it, or perhaps some other artists who work here at
Dia did. They built this shell inside the white cube as a proposal for an
alternative to the white cube. An alternative that poses an individual’s
subjective notion about another kind of structure to hold art. This room
is surfaced with tiles. It all fits right into normal home and building
construction practices. There are no eccentric means employed to this
eccentric end.
The tiles were manufactured in Mexico by craftspeople whose
names we don’t know. They are beautiful and desirable; I would like
them in my house too. Mary Heilmann, a NY artist, uses this same craft
to make her tiles. I love her tiles; they too are beautiful and desirable.

6
But hers are framed quite differently. They are seen alone surrounded
by white wall that serves to highlight and underline them. As a result
they become active as characters, full of line and gesture. They func-
tion as locations for a kind of narrative that points back at their author.
The Mexican tiles are here used as raw material.
Pardo’s design of this new cube for art is, perhaps, the most
provocative part of the “play”, more provocative than the series of
exhibitions that have taken place within it. He and Cooke together have
proposed an alternative to the white cube as a container for art.
Cooke as the curator is responsible for the structure of the exhibition
space. Here she invited Pardo to take over, or collaborate with her and
propose a radical change to the nature of the art bracket. The job of the
curator moves between structuring venues for art and responding to
the needs proposed by the art. The curator is thus moving between
roles, between being creative, like the artist, and being a facilitator for
the artist. The artist too moves between roles, filling a need as posed by
the curator and insisting on new circumstances as demanded by the
progress of the work. The relationship between the two parties and
these four different roles is of course complex and convoluted. It is fur-
ther complicated by how these roles are socially valued.
The artist occupies a peculiar place in class structure. Working with
our hands we are laborers. But we also often find ourselves in the posi-
tion of boss over other laborers working for us. Unlike the curator who
rarely gets his hands dirty mucking around with the physical world, the
artist often does. As we artists gain recognition we often decide to
keep our hands clean. Pardo has made this choice. Historically, art
making has been tied to working with material. Working with material
is a kind of thinking; a thinking that is full of richness and operates
quite differently from thought generated while seated at a desk. Desk
thinking floats free from the resistance and logic of time and space in
the material world. The two kinds of thinking need not be divorced
from one another. It is tragic that the rich thinking that grows from
physical labor has been relegated to the bottom rung of our ladder.
The artist functions at once as a dirty déclassé laborer and as a god.
Either way the discomfort associated with mucking about in the dirt is
pushed far away.

7
 Given this class structure it is not surprising that artists, like every-
one else, desiring success, often hire out the production of the prod-
uct thereby mirroring the means of production this country thrives
on. The artist with clean hands is left designing and currating.
Nevertheless, the role of art remains eccentric, ever changing, and
unpredictable, making it necessary to spend time gazing at the lines
between art, design, and architecture more than ever before. The
clashing of roles played by people and objects in the various move-
ments and unfolding of time in this space, that Pardo has orches-
trated, enables rich, and rewarding gazing. I use that word, “gazing,”
with some pleasure, aware of the weight it carries in relation to
Lacanian discourse about the imaging of women. Our vision is here
weighted, in relation to the pleasure it affords us, and in relation to
how looking is intertwined with our appetites. From a hedonistic point
of view, these appetites are necessary to good living. This weighted
gazing is here brought to bear on our mechanisms of economic sur-
vival as demonstrated by Jorge Pardo, the person, the entrepreneur,
and the artist full of expression. We are after all in his sales room; the
room that is presenting his product and advertising what he might do
for others. We are appreciating and engaging in how he makes sense of
the world. And we are simultaneously presented a room that proposes
an absence of personal expression, and rather contains a layering of
style and design emanating from a myriad of producers, some named
and others unnamed. Our gaze moves heavily over manipulated evo-
cations of style wafting off of the economic machinery that we all par-
ticipate in, out of necessity, and by choice, and often, with pleasure.
i.e. Buying cars, decorating our homes, engaging in hobbies.

Art making seems to reflect the means of production, particularly in

sculpture; given the difficulty of defining sculpture now, perhaps that
could serve as part of its definition. We are further removed from how
the things we need and use are made then ever before. Most of us
don’t understand how a computer works. Our cars are full of little
computer parts. Hi-tech machines and materials surround us. That
we can speak to each other on cell phones and that whole essays and
pictures travel from my computer to my AirPort 15 feet away is

8
unspeakably amazing. I have no idea how it works. (Why not believe in
life after death given this amazing demonstration of incomprehensible
occurrence!) Hand made things have become quaint. Where does that
leave art making?
Art making, has traditionally been the placeholder for the continu-
ation of learning through making that we all engage in as children. We
need this part of our human selves to be reflected in the culture or we
are left in a very awkward relation to our bodies.

Artists used to be understood as craftspeople. Art was an object made

by hand. Perhaps art was the repository of the more eccentric
impulses generated by making in the flow of making the things needed
for life - soap, toys, furniture, houses, all made by people locally with
available materials. Now we are aware of very little, if any, of the mak-
ing of what we need. It happens elsewhere, often overseas. There are
definitely politics to how things are made. We have many things
because we don’t pay for them what we would charge if we were the
makers. It is of course a great pleasure to have all these things and to
be able to engage with such an enormous pool of significance and
stimulation in the stuff around us. But it is also painful to be so divorced
from the making of things and from those others who make our things.
Our art today reflects this distance. And so, a lot of art seems to be, on
the face of it, not about making; it is more curatorial in its impulse. To
collect a bunch of things and arrange them is a respected form of
activity across the board. Art is mirroring our lack of production.
Instead of using labor and skill, time and sweat, and hands and body
to make objects, now many of us, instead, like the corporations and
paper pushers around us, buy from others and direct the orchestration
of material in space. We have become curators of objects bracketed off
in the exhibition space. And often, art is no longer so far removed from
the world outside the door. In the absence of understanding how
things work, style and design have become tremendously important
and often divorced from function. So the two, design and art move
closer together from both sides of the divide. And the space that
Pardo’s work sits in gets smaller and smaller.

9
Act I – Project, 2000
(September 13, 2000 – June 2002)

For the first act in this series of four exhibitions Pardo placed some
objects in what is now his space. He placed a 1995 Volkswagen Beetle
prototype made of clay, and a wardrobe designed by Alvar Aalto.
Pardo in that first act, currated the exhibition of those two objects in
relation to his own peculiar exhibition space. Because Pardo’s redesign
of the exhibition space has been proposed as an event separate from
the exhibitions it contains, some currated by Pardo and some by Cooke,
the curatorial gesture has been given greater weight. That the “play”
takes place under the auspices of Dia also gives it weight.
The Volkswagen prototype, made of clay is curious in this context
because it is a hand made object. It is a one of a kind thing...just as we
assume art objects are. But it’s also the prototype for a car. A con-
sumer good produced in enormous quantities. We are urged both to
express our uniqueness and to align ourselves with others by buying
this car. The design of the car aims to provoke our desire. Like Pardo’s
design of this exhibition space, and like his lamps in the gift shop, it
gives us pleasure.
Alvar Aalto, a well-known architect, designed the cabinet. Part of
what this cabinet brings with it into Pardo’s gallery is a pointing to the
crossing from one discipline into another that Aalto engaged in, and
mirrors that slippage between disciplines in Pardo’s work. The Aalto
cabinet and Pardo’s lights have a similar function in the world. I spent
some time looking at Aalto’s work as I was preparing this lecture and I
imagine that Pardo feels some affinity to his work, that he is one of
Pardo’s influences.
The mural paintings on the walls of the gallery and the bookstore
seem to function independently of the objects. They are computer
generated, and thereby distanced from the hand and the body. They at
once look like “paintings”, and like graphic logos or signs. Perhaps
they are signs for paintings. Perhaps they exist in the same ballpark
with Laura Owens or Clifford Still; and maybe not. They are signs adver-

10
tising the show. Maybe they are logos for the maverick business, for
the Pardo store. I like them but they are floating too high above my
head to focus on. They are in both the store and the exhibition space,
suggesting yet again sameness between the functions of the two. They
hint at an experience of overload as found in the supermarket, or
Times Square, in this space which is otherwise quiet, calm, and
enabling of contemplation.

This tiled exhibition space, the Volkswagen prototype, the Aalto

wardrobe, Pardo’s mural paintings, and the glass lights in the book-
store, each in their own way collapse the private personal impulse to
make things with shared conventions and public space. Taken
together, the collection of these gestures is aimed at the individual
situated within a large public audience, all of us together are involved
in the consumption of mass produced goods, even while we are drawn
towards an appreciation for, interest in and maybe even valuing of the
person alone with one small vulnerable and eccentric body.

Act II – Reverb
(September 19, 2001 – June 16, 2002)

Cooke again invited Pardo to make something in this tiled space, this
time in relation to Gilberto Zorio’s work from 1969. Pardo was not
involved in this curatorial gesture. He made some curtains. These,
though they are “sculptures” are also an architectural element. They’re
curtains. They make me think of Jasper John’s flag painting as they pose
the question, are they curtains or representations of curtains?
The work of these two artists was contained by the eccentric sub-
jectivity of Pardo’s cube, in place of the white cube we are accustomed
to. What an outlandish curatorial idea! Perhaps the authority Dia has
accrued muffles the playful wackiness of this gesture. We all take it
very seriously. Because there are only three parts, or players in this
exhibition, unlike the Utopia Station show in the Venice Biennale this

11
past summer, there is clarity about the space between them, even
while they are absurdly mixed up together. Within the context of this
play “Four Acts in One Cube,” Cooke’s curatorial gesture here in Act II,
is on par with Pardo’s curatorial gestures from Act I. At this juncture,
Cooke and Pardo are engaged in very similar activity.

Act III – Refraction

(September 4, 2002 – June 15, 2003)

Cooke invited Gerhard Richter to show some of his work spanning from
1966 through 2002. Pardo was not involved in this curatorial gesture
and the show did not include any of his objects. Richter presumably
made this body of work with the white cube in mind, consciously or
unconsciously, as we all do. This work was not made with this space in
mind or conceived of as a “show.” We are in the habit of focusing
intensely on the “show,” as opposed to the single and individual works
within it. A focus that has grown from the dialogue between the art-
work and the space as spawned by Minimalism
And yet, as Richter’s work is not about color, it was not disrupted by
the intensity of color in this space. In fact it was not disrupted at all. It
seemed to be quite self-contained; I imagine that this work could
function in many different kinds of space. It seemed not to participate
in a dialogue with the history of minimalism as outlined above. I took
great pleasure in this Act of the play. It was wonderful to have the air
taken out of my sails. As I traveled down the white cube conversation
stream; it all of a sudden seemed to matter not at all what the context
of the work was. The rug was pulled out from under my feet. Richter’s
work creates and explores the private obsessions of one single person
and makes them available to me. It seems direct, like reading a book;
the form is taken for granted. Cooke’s decision to put this work in this
space opened the door for our conversation to take another turn.
Might it be possible for us to find some conclusion or stasis in this bat-
tle between art and it’s context? Or perhaps, the degree to which

12
Richter’s work is at once so embracing of its surroundings and at the
same time, independent from them, is indicative of an alternative
strategy. This work functions like the glass partition between the
bookstore and the gallery. It straddles the neutral space that has been
assumed for it and the fullness of the space we find it in, while main-
taining a coherent sense of wholeness.

Act IV – Prototype
(September 17, 2003 – January 11, 2004)

Pardo is once again invited by Cooke to put some work into this space,
the particularity of which they together arrived at. During what might
be the final act of this play, there are changes within the gallery/show
room during the course of the exhibition. We are privy to the artist’s
process. Is this indicative of the process being valued, harkening back
in time? I’m not sure; or perhaps Pardo has become so comfortable
occupying this space that he has had access to for three years, that he
is treating it as his studio.
The first time I came to see this show there was a little bit of this kit
structure and there were some lamps on the floor. They formed a cir-
cle of glass on the floor; they seemed odd, vulnerable, and out of place.
If I remember correctly, they were not working lamps. They seemed
arbitrarily plopped down as placeholders for something. They func-
tioned like a fireplace, or as an alter in a temple, as an alter to design
and craft, and perhaps to the missing hand made thing. They were lus-
cious, vivid and full of allure but alone in the space. In some ways these
lamps and the graphics on the wall act as cartoons of “expression” in
their relationship to being exhibited. The curtain, this time painted on
the walls of the gallery, uses four different colors of green, all of them
different from the three colors of green in the tile. The floor and the wall
are clashing with each other; they are superbly odd. Two systems that
don’t sit well together at all. Both are modular as is the kit creature

13
looming over me. The curtain of paint is not beautiful. It’s like a car-
toon. A cartoon of “expression.” Of the hand made.
This painted curtain now obscures the view through the glass par-
tition separating Pardo’s work, the things he made, from the book-
store. My experience in the gallery space is now more internal; my
gaze is not directed outward. There is an emphasis on fiction. The
painted curtain is not also a real curtain as it was in Act II. The “kit”
monster/house is alive with quirky narratives played out against the
backdrop of the painted and tiled set. The kit is like real life Lego for
grownups. Here, this time, Pardo is not contrasting his own products
with those of other people. He is inviting us whole-heartedly into his
own place of narrative.
The next time I come to see the show I find the glass lamps are gone
and this “kit” structure is more developed. It is like a big animal or a
model for a dinosaur. It, like the curtain, is made up of planes. It’s like
a drawing; it’s portable and reproducible. It is like an eccentric Ikea
product. The design world that this work grows out of places high value
on the skill and craft that have become suspect when expressed by the
hands of a lone artist.
I, of course, enjoy the relationships between the flat painted curtain
and the real curtain in the back office. I am startled by the bit of painted
curtain that runs over one plane of this animal house structure. All
together, my experience in the gallery now is filled with a bit of nostal-
gia for all that has passed here. In contrast to visiting the Pierre
Huyigue show upstairs, experiencing this work is now like putting on
worn cloths.

Art is alive; it is an activity just like getting to work every day, Art and
making sure that the subways work and the roads are maintained
contribute to our sense of well being. It is of the moment. It has value
right now. It contributes to describing our world for us so that we know
what to do everyday. It is easy to lose sight of this very immediate
function that art has when we are busy judging it and struggling to
understand it as valuable historically. We, all of us, strive for genius; we
want to make the best, be the best, own the best, and know the best.
Maybe in the end that’s not what is most important in art.

14
I’m sure making things original or having original thoughts can’t be
the ultimate end. Nevertheless, I continue to judge works of art for
their originality. There is, however, a difference between what is new
for me, what the culture experiences as new, and what is actually new.
Each one of us moves through life beginning as young, naïve, and
unknowing, we move through to middle age and, and then, though
I’m finding it hard to accept, we all die. What I find cliché and over-
worked may indeed provide a world opening experience for someone
else, or visa versa. This can’t be discounted. I don’t believe in progress.
Art isn’t better now than it was a hundred years ago. Art serves individ-
uals on our journeys through life. Our notion that art should change
season to season and continue to be always new, mirrors and feeds
capitalist economy, and at the same time stresses our connections to
one another, acting as cultural glue.
The complexity raised by the layering of roles and references in this
Pardo Play opens up some room for the author to be just a person living
amongst the contradictions the work evokes, not a genius on a pedestal.

To Conclude

An artist, one person, one subject, arranges things in the gallery. If

someone else makes these things, that person’s name tends not to be
on the wall of the gallery, just the artist’s. The value of what the artist
does is understood as an orchestration of significance. I am loath to say
that we don’t value making, or that we don’t understand it to be full of
significance in its own right. That is not exactly true. It is true, however,
that there is enormous tension and struggle around the question of
how we are to value craft in art. Should art embody technical skill?
How do we determine if something is well made? What is the difference
between art and craft? Do we look to the trades; should it be made
like a kitchen cabinet? Or is something well made when it appears to be
machined with no evidence of the hand. And how do we enjoy the evi-
dence of our hands making, embodied by objects, without having

15
them become quaint and “primitive” seeming? Perhaps abstract
expressionism has become taboo in light of this struggle. To discount
abstract expressionism as self-involved and exclusive of the larger
world seems to be itself a very conservative gesture devaluing the
individual in favor of the collective.

Nevertheless, we celebrate the work of individuals, show the work of

individuals and experience ourselves as individuals. I wonder why then,
so much of the discussion around contemporary art is focused on a
reluctance to allow or recognize the “expression” of the individual.
Clearly, any exciting work transcends the life of the individual who
made it, and becomes engaged with the world in communication that
is shared by many, or at least some others. Our stories are necessarily
not ourselves. The story is already removed from the flow of lived
experience. Since I have been engaged in this conversation that is art,
my respected teachers and peers have described abstract expression-
ism as resting on a deluded notion. That anyone else should care about
the personal expression or feelings of the artist has been posed as
ridiculous. However, in light of the fact that we still anoint the gallery
wall with the artist’s name, I understand the contents of the gallery to
be an “expression” of that person. Whether the gestures contained by
the white cube reflect the hand and body of the artist or just the mind
seems not to impinge on how personal a gesture it is. It is the gesture
of a single person indicative of what that person cares about and how
they think. In modern western culture we place high value on individ-
uality. Democracy rests on this value. One of the most pressing and
engaging themes running through contemporary culture expresses
the struggle to make sense of individuals as free thinking, free willed
entities that are nevertheless nothing without the web of history and
infrastructure that we all share. Art as we know it, kept bracketed in
the flow of life within the white cube, is the expression of individual
thought. Art within the white cube is engaging, compelling, some-
times threatening, and most wonderful precisely because it is able to
embody the most outrageous eccentric individual expression.
I love eccentricity; and I need it to be valued. I find it compelling to
notice that the individual as defined in contemporary western culture

16
expresses an extraordinary moment in history. Though each of us has
grown up with this notion, it is in fact still a very young, brand new
idea. Our sense of ourselves as individual is of central importance to art
making, particularly in the visual arts; and yet, I also love being witness
to and participating in the ongoing rich and spicy struggle of contem-
porary sculpture with the white cube. The struggle between the indi-
vidual art object and the layers of brackets that surround it, the
pedestal, the frame, the white, cube, the curator, the institution, the
magazine, the television etc., are freighted with metaphors that are
pivotal to our quickly changing political order.
In this “play” Jorge Pardo was the driving force; his was the pri-
mary name on the wall. But there were countless other named and
unnamed people responsible for the “raw material,” that became the
subject of Pardo’s curatorial enterprise. And there were the other
artists, Zorio and Richter whose work was introduced to play along
side Pardo’s. Their names were on the wall. And there was the work of
Lynne Cooke whose name floats in the background, but her ideas and
invitations were pivotal to what happened here. She provided, or
manipulated, the Meta structure. There was great complexity gener-
ated around the question of production and authorship.
In the end, though in my own work I hang on to the mark of the
artists hand, and hearken back to cottage industry, more than Pardo,
and I do not see myself in a battle with the legacy of abstract expres-
sionism, contrarily perhaps I am arguing for a renewed focus on the
vulnerable and private space of individual minds, I do however, find
myself fully engaged with this work and appreciative of the complex-
ity brought to the questions of expression, ego, class, pleasure, desire,
and consumption. And I most appreciate that this rich arena is opened
up through my experience of time and space. My mind and my body
are invited together to meander through various landscapes as I define
them in collaboration with Jorge Pardo, Lynne Cooke, and all those
other people and expressions that they have embraced.

17