Artists: A Maior, Louise Ashcroft, Gina Beavers, Tony Cokes, Tracey Emin, FLAME, Sylvie Fleury, Andrea Fraser, Florence Jung, Sarah Lucas, Marlon Mullen, Ima-Abasi
Okon, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Heji Shin, Cole Speck, Tenant of Culture, Betty Tompkins, Nora Turato, Christine Wang, Dena Yago
Exhibition title: Image Power. Institutional Critique Today
Curated by: Melanie Bühler
Venue: Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands
Date: March 7 – September 30, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Smart Objects, Los Angeles
‘Image Power’ – the first chapter of the exhibition trilogy ‘The Art of Critique’ – is a group exhibition featuring twenty international artists whose work questions the role of art in our image-driven age of social media and political unrest. ‘Image Power’ is part of the exhibition series ‘The Art of Critique’– an inquiry into contemporary forms of Institutional Critique. The exhibition series links the embodied, feminist forms of critique of Andrea Fraser, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas (in the collection of the Frans Hals Museum) to those employed by artists working today.
The artistic movement of Institutional Critique feels particularly urgent today, as we are witnessing an intense moment of “institutional critique” in society at large: fueled by social media, the critique of institutions – think of phenomena like #MeToo, Brexit and the large scale climate protests – is practiced everywhere with an intensity and at a scale that feels unmatched.
At the same time, one can question whether it still makes sense to treat the art world as a separate institutional field now that art institutions align themselves more and more with profit-oriented thinking and impulses generated within the art field are quickly swallowed up by a larger creative industry.
Taking into account these developments, ‘The Art of Critique’ asks what constitutes a practice of Institutional Critique today.
Image Power
What does art have to do with the 100 million images posted on Instagram every day? The past years have seen the rapid integration of technology into both everyday life and, simultaneously, the art field. Museums have gone from advertising strict no-photograph policies to welcoming selfies and suggesting hashtags. Museum collections that were once only accessible through restricted internal databases are now fully searchable online, and users are encouraged to like and share as much as possible. While the latter example suggests a process of democratization, the former perhaps also allows us to imagine museums being reduced to mere “content farms” in the service of social media.
Online communication has become more and more visual, and visual codes have become increasingly sophisticated. New platforms have emerged that place a greater focus on images than their predecessors. We have gone from blogs to Facebook and from Instagram, via Snapchat, to TikTok. Images are everywhere. How does the field of art, which has traditionally been the domain of image production, relate to these platforms? And how is it being reshaped by them? Artworks by Dena Yago, Gina Beavers, FLAME, Jaakko Pallasvuo and Louis Ashcroft thematize important aspects of this new landscape and the role and function of art therein.
Many works in ‘Image Power’ show that the consequences of art and its institutions – meaning art history, artists and museums – reach beyond the world of art alone, that they also affect society in a larger sense. The artworks also show that the opposite applies too. Some artworks draw from the ways critique is presently voiced elsewhere and apply this to the sphere of art: they bring the strategies of the #MeToo movement to art history (Betty Tompkins), for instance, or use the figure of the whistle -blower as a stand in for the critical artist (Nora Turato). Many of the artworks challenge their own status as artworks as they also relate to and draw from other fields such as fashion, or the world of consumption and luxury.
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Tennant of Culture, The Latest Thing, 2016, used sweatpants, thread, stretcher bars, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij.
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Tennant of Culture, The Latest Thing (left), A Maior, Sunkissed stack (blue hologram fade) (right), photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. A Maior, Sunkissed stack (green fade) (left), 2016-2020, A Maior, Sunkissed stack (blue hologram fade), 2016-2017 (right), photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Tennant of Culture, Works and Days, 2018, recycled backpacks, thread, plaster, bungeecord, steel, Courtesy of Outpost Gallery, Norwich UK, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Marlon Mullen, Untitled, 2016 (left, Marlon Mullen, Untitled, 2017 (right), Courtesy of Edwin Oostmeijer, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Cole Speck & Beau Dick, Beaver in Hudson’s Bay Bag, 2019, alder, acrylic, graphite, HBC felt blanket, HBC shopping bag, Courtesy of Boot Dog and Friends, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Marlon Mullen, Untitled (left), Cole Speck & Beau Dick, Beaver in Hudson’s Bay Bag, 2019 (right), photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum 2020. Sarah Lucas, The Team, 2002 (left), Sarah Lucas, I just love Blokes (single Urinal, 2002 (left), Sarah Lucas, Self Portrait with Skull, 1997 (right), Frans Hals Museum, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals museum, 2020. Sylvie Fleury, Compact Pêche, 2018 (left), Sylvie Fleury, Compact Limpide, 2018 (middle), Sylvie Fleury, Couture Palettes – Ballets Russes, 2018 (right), Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London/Paris/Salzburg, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Nora Turato, It’s good to be critical but even better to be on point LOL, 2020, video, Frans Hals Museum, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Heji Shin, Poor in World, 2012 (left), Sarah Lucas, Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996 (right), photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Heji Shin, Poor in World, 2012, C-print, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Köln/New York, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Christine Wang, Death, 2015, acrylic on canvas, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Sylvie Fleury, Pink explosion, 2018, acrylic on canvas on wood, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London/Paris/Salzburg, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Betty Tompkins, Women Words (Carpaccio #1), 2018, acrylic on book page, Courtesy of galerie rodolphe janssen and the artist, photo: Gert van Rooij.
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Dena Yago, Ear Seed, 2020, colored chalk on wall, Frans Hals Museum, photo: Gert van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Installation View, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. FLAME, Amazon, 2018, oil and acrylic on canvas, Courtesy of Collection Thilo Heinzmann, Berlin, photo: Gert van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Gina Beavers, Mona Lisa Nail, 2015, acrylic on canvas, Courtesy of The Hott Collection, New York, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Gina Beavers, Surreal, 2019 (left), Gina Beavers, Need Money, 2019 (middle), Gina Beavers, We are not dating abstraction, 2019 (right), Courtesy of the artist and GNYP Gallery, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Jaakko Pallasvuo, avocado_ibuprofen (slide projection), 2020, digital reproductions of pen drawings on slide film, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Installation View, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Louise Ashcroft, Dead Relevant, 2020, video animation, Frans Hals Museum, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Cole Speck & Beau Dick, Beaver in Hudson’s Bay Bag, 2019 (left), Tennant of Culture, The Latest Thing, 2016 (right), photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Tony Cokes, B4 & After the Studio Pt. 1, 2019, video, Courtesy of the artist, Greene Naftali, New York, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Andrea Fraser, Inaugural Speech, 1991, video, Frans Hals Museum, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
Image Power. Institutional Critique Today, Frans Hals Museum, 2020. Installation View, photo: Gert Jan van Rooij