www.laurette.net / projects / 2002 / The Gift
show / project
THE GIFT: Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality
February 07 - May 05, 2002
With Vito Acconci, Jochen gerz, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Marie-ange Guilleminot, Jens Haaning, Mona Hatoum, Zhang Huan, Massimo Kaufman, Yves Klein, Matthieu Laurette, Piero Manzoni, Ana Mendiata, Lee Mingwei, Gabriel Orozco, Luca Pancrazzi, Navin Ravanchaikul, Man Ray, Roee Rosen, Yutaka Sone, Rirkrit Tiravanija and others...
>SCOTTSDALE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
7374 E. 2nd St., Scottsdale
Phoenix, Arizona. USA
www.smoca.org
Travelling exhibition:
Bronx Museum of the Arts
November 27, 2002 - March 2, 2003
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ
May 31 - August 9, 2003
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario
September 13, 2003 - January 2004
exhibited work(s)
Installation. Posters, TV set, wall bracket, video onto DVD (’Apparitions: Money-Back Products (96-97)’, duration: 40min.looped with subtitles). Unique piece.
press release
THE GIFT: Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality
From Saturday, February 09, 2002 to Sunday, May 05, 2002
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
7374 E. 2nd St., Scottsdale
Phoenix, Arizona. USA
gift /gift/ n. 1 thing given; a present. 2 natural ability or talent. 3 act or instance of giving.
SMoCA hosts the American premiere of The Gift: Generous Offerings, Threatening Hospitality, organized by the Centro Arte Contemporanea Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy. The exhibition imaginatively appraises the multiple meanings contained in the act of giving and receiving. Mona Hatoum’s Doormat, for example, beckons with the word "Welcome," yet as viewers approach they realize this welcome mat is a prickly field of sharp steel pins. Each artwork presents a personal observation on the idea of gifts, dedications, homages, invitations, gestures of hospitality, and gratuitous offerings. Many significant international contemporary artists are featured in the exhibition, as well as the historical masters Vito Acconci, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Yves Klein, Gabriel Orozco, and Man Ray.
Organized by Independent Curators International.
Guest curator Gianfranco Maraniello and Antonio Somaini
In a world more and more dominated by the rigid regulation of personal relationships and populated mostly by objects intended as products and commodities, certain works of art seem to underline the importance of disinterested and gratuitous gestures, capable of generating and symbolizing a new binding relationship between artist, work and viewer. At the same time, other works show how often the nature of gifts is often ambiguously suspended between generosity and challenge, altruism and egoism, and how behind seemingly innocuous offerings and generous homages lies an attempt to establish and impose power relationships through expressions of antagonism and rivalry.
With the aim of shedding light on the multiple meanings veiled in the acts of giving and receiving, The Gift presents works that have been conceived by artists as gifts, dedications, homages, invitations, gestures of hospitality, and gratuitous offerings. Uniting art from the past and works specifically conceived for this exhibition, they range from gifts of one's self or body to insidious and threatening invitations.
For the exhibition, the curators have used the concept of a gift to interpret the relationship between artist, work, and viewer, suggesting a path that links together a stimulating sequence of works that include different forms of the gift: offerings intended as commemoration and as assumption of responsibility (Felix Gonzalez-Torres), gestures capable of locating new forms of community and belonging (Jochen Gerz), welcoming spaces for recreation and reflection (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Marie-Ange Guilleminot), performances giving life to the dead (Ana Mendieta), gifts of one's most intimate self, such as the heart or one's own breath (Gabriel Orozco, Piero Manzoni), reenactments and commemorations of the sacrifice of one's own body (Zhang Huan, Massimo Kaufmann), ambiguous and insidious invitations to share one's space (Mona Hatoum), poisoned or anguishing gifts (Carsten Höller, On Kawara), homages to real or fictive personae (Roee Rosen, Yutaka Sone), and strategies to exploit and subvert the false gifts that populate the world of commodities (Matthieu Laurette, Jens Haaning).
invitation card
coming soon
publication
Il dono / The Gift, 51, 69, 413, 466-467. Exh. cat. Milan: Charta, 2001. Essays by various authors: Antonio Somaini, Gian Franco Maraniello, Harald Szeemann et al.; documentation of works.
related articles
coming soon
related links
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art website http://www.scottsdalearts.org/smoca/
ICI website http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/Exhibitions/Gift/gift.htm
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