General Ideas: Rethinking Conceptual Art 1987–2005
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
September 15 – November 13, 2005
The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents "General Ideas: Rethinking Conceptual Art 1987–2005," an exhibition that considers the legacy of conceptual art in works produced by a generation of artists born during or close to the first phase of conceptual art production (1965–1975). Organized by Matthew Higgs, adjunct curator for the Wattis Institute and Director of White Columns in New York, "General Ideas" is on view in the CCA Wattis Institute's Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts.
"General Ideas" seeks to explore works in the wake of conceptual art and how the ideas and approaches of this movement have influenced subsequent generations of artists. "Like their conceptualist precursors, the works in "General Ideas" employ the 'language, actions, processes, and existing cultural forms' of quotidian life to, in LeWitt's words, 'leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach,'" writes Matthew Higgs in an essay about the exhibition.
Featured artists include Francis Als, Jennifer Bornstein, Adam Chodzko, Martin Creed, Andrea Fraser, Liam Gillick, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jamie Isenstein, Emily Jacir, Emma Kay, Adam McEwen, Jonathan Monk, Gabriel Orozco, Rob Pruitt, Kay Rosen, Josh Shaddock, Santiago Sierra, Ron Terada and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Works in the show range from photographs and lithographs, to mixed media installations, video and new media works. Examples include Adam Chodzko's "The God Look-Alike Contest" (1992–93), a series of images born out of a classified advertisement he placed in a London newspaper long before the ubiquity of the internet and reality television; Andrea Fraser's video work "Little Frank and His Carp" (2001), depicting an unauthorized intervention in the newly opened Guggenheim Bilbao (designed by Frank Gehry) that followes the sexually suggestive subtext of the museum's audio-tour guide to its logical denouement; and "Five Coloured Words in Neon" (2003), in which through the cool glamour of neon, Ron Terada restages post 9/11 hysteria while making a sly historical nod to the artist Joseph Kosuth.
CCA WATTIS INSTITUTE FOR THE ARTS
California College of the Arts, San Francisco
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
