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"Almost Art"
Gian Carlo Pagliasso, Carlos Ginzburg, Hamdi Attia, Tom Fruin, Kara Crews and Rudyard Snaggs, Shahram Entekhabi, Pascal Dombis, Karen Shaw, Cesar Henao
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Press Kit
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Exhibit Duration: January 28 - March 20, 2006
Location: Slought Foundation
Reception: Saturday, January 28, 2006
Exhibition Openings Series
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Osvaldo Romberg
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Slought Foundation, a non-profit organization rethinking contemporary art, is pleased to announce the exhibition "Almost Art: Speculative gestures. Aspiration. Utopia.," on display in the galleries from January 28-March 20, 2006. The public reception will take place on Saturday, January 28th, 2006 from 6:30-8:30pm, with all of the participating artists in attendance. This exhibition has been curated by Osvaldo Romberg, Senior Curator at Slought Foundation.
"Almost Art" samples work by a variety of international artists from countries such as Iran, Egypt, France, Argentina, Germany, and the United States. The exhibition posits a series of marginal proposals that bring together and question typical concepts and clichés concerning the nature of art and the forms that it conventionally assumes. From the eighteenth century to the present, the fine arts have sequentially appropriated activities previously associated with other domains, including photography, performance, sadomasochistic activities, and critical inquiry. Over the course of the last twenty years, this process has further accelerated to a point of vertigo. One way to grasp this process is to examine artists which are currently operating on the periphery of mainstream culture. They engage in practices which overlap with recent developments in visual and social anthropology.
The artists in "Almost Art" engage in sophisticated proposals about utopia, political criticism, and even oedipal relationships. The apparent simplicity and superficiality of these artworks masks an enormous complexity and sensitivity to issues that profoundly affect the future of artistic practice and the relation between art and society. This exhibition emphasizes in particular a tendency which Charles Eschew, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and co-curator of the recent Istanbul Biennial, cleverly defines in a recent essay, "Collectivity: Modest Proposals and Foolish Optimism." Eschew argues for the creation of works of art which are humble in conception and materiality and which are essentially speculative. “Modest proposals,” he writes,” generally make use of existing objects, conditions and situations and manipulate the elements into different, more aspirational or purposeful configurations.” They do so “in order to deal with real existing conditions and what might be necessary in order to change them.”
With permission from the artist, Slought Foundation has reconstructed for the "Almost Art" exhibition Carlos Ginzburg's seminal 1974 work "Qu'est-ce que l'art? Prostitution." For the original work, Ginzburg rented an Argentinian prostitute in a Belgian brothel, and asked her to hold up a sign that, quoting the French poet Charles Baudelaire, read: "What is art? Prostitution." Is Ginzburg, following Baudelaire, condemning the artist who lowers himself by entering the sordid economy of exchange? Or as Wendy Steiner writes in her recent book Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty, is Baudelaire reminding us that the artist "stands outside bourgeois morality altogether, open to any experience"? Please join us in considering questions such as these during a live reconstruction of Ginzburg's piece at the exhibition opening.
Please note: this exhibition features a variety of works that include nudity, high-voltage electricity, radiation, and seizure-inducing video projections. Minors must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Individuals wearing pacemakers or electronic medical devices should consult a Slought Foundation staff member before entering the exhibition.
Read the full curatorial essay
Osvaldo Romberg is a Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a Senior Curator at Slought Foundation, where he has curated retrospectives on artists William Anastasi, Hermann Nitsch, and Dennis Oppenheim.
To Cite this Page using MLA Style:
Gian Carlo Pagliasso, et al. "Almost Art." Slought Foundation Online Content.
[28 January 2006;
Accessed 29 August 2008]. <http://slought.org/content/11315/>.
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This program was made possible in part through the generous sponsorship of Epson America and AMM S.A. / Referencement.com
 
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