On Publications, Portraits, Public Art and Performance
Curated by Daniel Baumann

“Portraits” will present one or more works by Alan Kane, Elizabeth Peyton, Andy Warhol, and Artur Żmijewski and takes the form of institutional presentation of great artworks. The exhibition examines the question of what happened to the portrait as a picture of an individual after it was trivialized by photography, television, sociology, mass media psychology and facebook. Each work formulates another type of portrait in a different medium: film and object by the Polish artist Artur Żmijewski in his installation Books (2005) about a man trying to turn pages of a book; two early drawings by the American artist Andy Warhol who later would coin the phrase ‘fifteen minutes of fame,’ which summarizes today what portrait is meant to be; a series of drawings by American artist Elizabeth Peyton whose pictures keep on depicting what people mean when they talk about a person’s aura; and finally, in photography, a series of photographs taken by British artist Alan Kane of barber shop windows where models for haircuts are displayed in the form of portraits of anonymous and everyday beauty.

If „Portraits“ is the exhibition, „Publications“ is the bookshop. It will include a selection of mostly self-published art magazines, books and zines, among them anp quarterly, Antonio Meneghetti, Black Pages, Continuous Project, Documentation Céline Duval, Fama & Fortune Bulletin, Herald St 2010, Here and There, Lovely Daze, Meckert, Megawords, Memphis, Mollusk, Never Or Forever, Nieves, Paper, Piktogram, Pinups, Provence, Tbilisi 6, Tiffany, Univers, Used Future, Veneer and others. It also features Dieter Roth’s Advertisments, a collection of more than 200 advertisements that the artist placed in a local Swiss journal between 1971 and 1972. They consisted of simple sentences like “Cows have served us the most fillet steaks”, “Even if estrangement persists—strangers and strangeness pass” or “The sea is a ship”. The list of publications is far from complete, and it refers to the culture of self-publishing as an attempt to gain autonomy for being present in other public spaces.

The same can be said of “Public Art”, this complicated and partly unloved child of the arts and the art world -- abandoned or institutionalized. Abandoned by a silent consensus, that art in public space brings good money but no sense, institutionalized by city councils as key for successful city marketing. But there are things to be done, as we realized a few years ago in Tbilisi, Georgia. It started by asking Wade Guyton, Andro Wekua and Richard Wright if they permitted us to integrate some of their works into town. Installed without permission and much ambition for durability, this public art was cheap, elegant and absurd. Last year, our approach took new directions as Ei Arakawa, Sergei Tcherepnin and others performed musical scores in a hostel, in the subway, in the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, at the Tbilisi Grishashvili Museum-Library etc. –- while artists Emil Michael Klein, Tobias Madison, Kaspar Müller and Emanuel Rossetti installed their sculptures and wallpapers in the courtyard of a central residential building. Emil Michael Klein, Tobias Madison, Kaspar Müller and Emanuel Rossetti will come to Glasgow to continue their projects.

If „Portraits“ is the exhibition, „Publications“ the bookshop and “Public Art” the sculpture garden, “Performance” is about the score, the concert and the moment that lingers on. Scottish artist Sue Tompkins will present a series of text works that are as much scores for a potential or past, performance. American composer and musician Sergei Tcherepnin will perform during the opening on April 16th at 20:00 and again on April 17th at 12:00 at the Modern Institute, Suite 6 Floor 1 on 73 Robertson Street.

On Publications, Portraits, Public Art and Performance: Saturday 17 April until 15 May 2010
Preview: Friday 16 April, 7pm - 9pm
Monday - Friday 10.00am - 5.00pm, Sat 12noon - 5.00pm
Free admission
The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd, Floor 1 Suite 6 73 Robertson Street, Glasgow G2 8QD
Tel: +44 141 248 3711