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Press Release of the Exhibition
To accept that language, whether written, spoken, or drawn, is already substance before it is applied as such to become artistic material, allows us—at the least—to assert its plasticity. Above all, it allows us to understand that, whatever our language, time, or culture, we cannot escape form. Furthermore, we are faced with another observation, inherent to what happens in the immediate here and now, that concerns the reflexivity of the language: it seems to us less evident that a graphic or sound material can be reflexive, i.e., that it can refer to its own form, and, simultaneously, to elements that are not entirely contained in it. This amazing ability of linguistic signs to refer to themselves and to things that are not comparable to them, even if well known, does not cease to be amazing. The wondrous thing about it is due to what in linguistics is called the transparence and the opacity of the sign: on the one hand, when paying attention to characters and letters we don’t really access meaning; and on the other hand, whenever we focus on meaning, we tend to forget the material dimension. The sign both hides and unveils the signified thing. In the case of artworks where the poetic function of the language prevails, this duplicity is strongly reduced, making us hesitate between sound, image, matter, and idea.
In the immediate experience—and contrary to what is usually stated, but without provocation—the artworks by Lawrence Weiner are visual works. Their format, scale, layout, colors, and their use of space and distance, all refer us to a situation where the material, the physical, and the tangible are dominant. Even more accurately, they impose themselves as a bodily experience. Paradoxically—and always in the immanent experience—corporeality is not in their substance, but in what their forms say. Only in the tangible presence of these artworks can we understand that the intellectual relation (supposedly the only kind of relation) ultimately resides in our body. To understand that without incorporation (learning something) there can be no comprehension, we only need to imagine completely unknown words or letters. There is a simple reason for this: because it is made of matter, form, and texture, language models our being, our body, our hearing, and our sensitivity. This modeling, or even better, this plasticity cannot be purely intellectual. The image and language artifacts we produce serve as representations of something. Once we perceive what is represented, these artifacts disappear or are discarded because, according to a peculiar dualistic criterion, the intelligible is more valued than the sensible. Avoiding the opposite excesses of matterism or physicalism, concrete, visual and sound poetry highlight the sensible and the perceptible in the tangible presence of the text’s forms, sounds, and words—its corporeality—and thus render language as an act of perception. The artworks by Lawrence Weiner are presented in a concrete situation, or, more precisely, are seen in an indiciary or indexical relation to the viewer, in the here and now of the psycho-physical relation. It is in this sense that the perceptual experience cannot be solely intellectual, but mostly corporeal, integrating the sounds and the temporality produced by what we are seeing/reading. This verbal-vocal-visual field possesses an ideal facet, but one that is inevitably connected to the language’s corporeality. I guide my perception in and through language because the action of perception is in itself constituted of materialized language. However, the relation we have as we enter the exhibition space is precisely a non-immediate materialization, because we are simultaneously reading words that resend us to indiciary parameters—‘placed/colocado’, ‘to reach/para atingir’, ‘wheresoever/seja onde for’, ‘here is it not’, ‘under/debaixo’—which are apparently related to the actual position of the words and sentences on the wall, as well as to the reader/viewer’s situation—while simultaneously keeping the possibility of describing other situations, that are not referred to in the here and now. The walls where we can read, as if in a reflection, ‘Here is it’ and ‘Here is it not’, perfectly represent that situation, because it is precisely that situation where we can understand the ‘here’ as literal (these words on this wall), but also as concerning to something that is situated in some other context. The line drawn around the sentences calls our attention to something we shouldn’t forget, or highlights the fact that what we are reading is both present and not present. As we said before, it is both transparent and opaque. We are not dealing with the invisible, inaccessible or unintelligible, but with the non-complete, non-total access (transparence) to meanings. Because I cannot stop myself from thinking that ‘here is it’ could also be referring to the wall where I see painted ‘Here is it not’, and that in turn this last sentence refers to the other wall, and that both sentences refer to the entire exhibition, or to the building, maybe even to the street, or to an undefined and indeterminate context that cannot be, obviously, comprehensive. All that is painted on the walls mediates our access to the dimensions, scales, colors, visual features, and to the situations inherent to the words and phrases themselves—as in ‘crisscrossed/entrecruzado’; and ‘placed on either side of the light/colocado em ambos os lados da luz’—, in the sense that what is read designates—if it doesn’t explain or construes—the experience we are having. What we experience is mostly shaped by language, which indicates, designates, and points to what is happening: for example, the fact that we are reading something that deals precisely with the situation in which we are, and we are precisely doing what these same words indicate and designate. We are not, after all, seeing or perceiving reality, but what these sentences say about it. Let us imagine that, changing only a color in the installation (here in black), the red or the green, for example, the experience of thinking about (an undetermined) something that is ‘placed on either side of the light’ and something that is ‘colocado em ambos os lados da luz’ is certainly not the same, as the change in color (because of the codes intrinsic to a specific culture) would make us not only see or imagine a different thing, but would also not refer to the same thing—if we are indeed dealing with a ‘thing’. Evidently, what is ‘colocado’ or ‘placed’ can be the words and letters, but also the color (the black), or even time and space—starting with the simple space of the wall, the time of reading/seeing, that is, the reference system necessary to materialize this or any other experience. When we are proficient enough in two or more languages, we know (by experience) that different languages assign us to different times and different spaces; they can shift our bodies and minds into different contexts. Thus, we know that when living within or through a language we do not have the same body as when we express ourselves or act in another language. It is because of this that Lawrence Weiner’s artworks are, among many other things, representations of the body present. Jacinto Lageira The artist would like to give gracious thanks to Jacinto Lageira, José Roseira & Delfim Sardo for their admirable courage in translating the work into Portuguese. Lawrence Weiner work is presented in several private and public collections worldwide. BORN 10 FEBRUARY 1942 BRONX NEW YORK ART IS THE EMPIRICAL FACT OF THE RELATIONSHIPS OF OBJECTS TO OBJECTS IN RELATION TO HUMAN BEINGS & NOT DEPENDENT UPON HISTORICAL PRECEDENT FOR EITHER USE OR LEGITIMACY LAWRENCE WEINER DOWNLOAD PRESS
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Press Release of the Exhibition
LAWRENCE WEINER
'Poignant Adaptation' Mar 18th > Apr 17th 2010 “In the triangle formed by the author, the work and the public, the latter is not in any way a passive element which would only have a chain reaction, but rather a source of energy that contributes towards making the story itself. The life of the work in history cannot be considered without the participation of those to whom it is aimed”. 1 Hans Robert Jauss
The Reader Given the objectivity of Lawrence Weiner’s work, it becomes redundant to reflect upon anything beyond that which is presented to us. In a certain manner this artist has left us longing for to a “light at the end of the tunnel”, something that might help to settle his work within a fixed, easily understandable category.
However, all of the efforts undertaken lead further and further from the truth, that his works possess. Lawrence Weiner is absolutely simple in his purposes and in his procedures. Trying to complexify his work takes it away from its aim as Art. In fact, the works he carries out, in a clear concern for materiality, are veritable sculptures in the sense of being objects ready to undergo the processes inherent to any artistic performing. And it is hoped that they will be seen in this way: as materials set out as open to free reception. And it is the reception of the work, rather than its production, that will concern us here. As the critic, as Jauss states, is necessarily a reader before being able to locate or understand the work, or to fundament his own judgement on awareness of its situation. Thus this text will not deal with the artist’s modus operandi (which in fact does not exist) or the formal analysis of the work of art, but instead revolves around an element that is almost always set to one side but the leading role of which is of great importance to us. We are speaking about the spectator, and as this is a matter of works using words, about the reader2. In Weiner it is not a matter of using metaphors or phrases that intend to create ambiguities, multiple meanings or complex hermetic interpretations, but of demonstrating, through the permeability of language as a medium, how each work of art is the fruit of enormous freedom. Both for the person who produces it and the person who receives it. The work thus has access to existence through the act of interpreting, indifferent to the author’s intentions but focused on its receiver’s expectations and adaptations. The traditional aesthetics of production and representation is replaced by (or rather fused into) an aesthetics of reception and effects. This is the importance of translation in Weiner’s trajectory: making the texts he uses more understandable and accessible, but also recontextualising them in the right setting and in the concrete conditions of their reception. Just as any translation is betrayal, any adaptation is poignant. His work is formed within the perspective of a veritable dialectic: of the work with culture, of the author with the work, of the author with culture, of the work with its receiver, of the author with its receiver, of the receiver with culture, in a more open and infinite interaction of questions and answers. It is this dialogue that states the relationship of art in its broadest sense and life itself. The social dimension that reinforces the importance of the receiver’s experience is that which states the way that the work intervenes on the expectation horizon of our everyday lives, guiding or modifying our view of the world. This is perhaps a mission that is too demagogical for Art, but through this conclusion we can state that without doubt, like the text itself, the opening and virtual nature of his works, in their interactive and performing dimensions, cause some kind of transformation in the person who receives it. This is the wonder of any experience around a reading: when the text stops having a practical function, now opening up to its more reflective dimension, leaving its public perplexed, and showing that, in Art, the process of perception is an end in itself. Carla de Utra Mendes 1Jauss, Hans Robert, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (no translation into English available)
2The importance of this in the works of Weiner was always acknowledged by him from the beginning of his sort of manifesto (we prefer declaration of intent) dated 1968: 1. THE ARTIST MAY CONSTRUCT THE PIECE 2. THE PIECE MAY BE FABRICATED 3. THE PIECE NEED NOT TO BE BUILT EACH BEING EQUAL AND CONSISTENT WITH THE INTENT OF THE ARTIST THE DECISION AS TO CONDITION RESTS WITH THE RECEIVER UPON THE OCCASION OF RECEIVERSHIP DOWNLOAD PRESS
Exhibition view
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Press Release of the ExhibitionLAWRENCE WEINER
'The die is cast' Apr 13th > May 12th Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by American artist, Lawrence Weiner, the artist’s third with the gallery.
Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1942, Lawrence Weiner is considered to be one of the most significant artists of our time. Since the late sixties, he has worked exclusively with language, placing it at the service of his conception of art as the objective relationship between human beings and objects and the connections between objects and other objects. In his sculptural practice, he has consistently held to the premises articulated in his ‘Statement of Intent’: 1. THE ARTIST MAY CONSTRUCT THE PIECE 2. THE PIECE MAY BE FABRICATED 3. THE PIECE NEED NOT BE BUILT (EACH BEING EQUAL & CONSISTENT WITH THE INTENT OF THE ARTIST, THE DECISION AS TO CONDITION RESTS WITH THE RECEIVER UPON THE OCCASION OF RECEIVERSHIP). As Weiner himself has emphasized on multiple occasions, his work is designed to be translated, either into the physical form or other languages. For this show in Lisbon, Weiner will be debuting a suite of statements formulated in English and then translated to the Portuguese. In this particular instance, these statements will be carried in the form of vinyl pieces, which physically articulate with the gallery. In Lawrence Weiner’s work, the word ‘statement’, initially borrowed from American Express type of bills sent out to clients by mail detailing expenses accrued over a month, essentially refers to the record of an activity. Remotely interested in exploring the word’s association with bookkeeping, the idea of drawing up an account, it is rather the idea of the statement as a necessary and sufficient condition, an empirical reality which is neither an expression of intent nor a description or prescription that is of consequence to the artist’s work. An analysis of his statements, like the one undertaken by Birgit Pelzer in the October journal, is indicative of how they are structured to be non-evaluative and non-prescriptive. As Pelzer points out, although they include verbs, no single verb fixes the propositional content by linking the subject to the predicate. “A state of things is recorded, but without being fixed in a definition, a judgement, a causal deduction, an imperative. We are in the presence not of sentences but of distinct units of meaning. The absence of punctuation further reinforces the short, incomplete, suspended character of this form of writing”. For the exhibition at the gallery, entitled THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST, Weiner has designed an bilingual installation where the written word not only appears spread on the wall, but settles like dust on the ground. The statements appear to be an examination of materials, processes or states of preservation and the passage of time. Although Weiner himself emphasizes that language is not the issue in his work, the act of translation brings about a number of compelling realizations of which this exhibition is an instance. Translation, for Weiner, brings about the reduction of the universality of things, or as he once affirmed in an interview, “the lack of specific idioms for translation from one language to another requires the utilization of grey in a subject that is often thought to be black and white (art)”. Translation also brings the issue of the double meaning of material words to the fore. “When you translate from one language to another, the work changes, generally. But it doesn’t really – it changes specifically, but you get a general ambiguous feeling about the work. That’s the kind of feeling about the work that I’m dealing with”.
Exhibition view
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Press Release of the Exhibition
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
presents With all due intent | Com toda a intenção Solo exhibition by Lawrence Weiner Runs: March 11 – April 13, 2004 Opening March 11, 2004, 10 p.m Lawrence Weiner (Bronx, 1942) initiated his career, working essentially as a painter, in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. Weiner’s work rapidly evolved into restricted modular forms and the disappearance of the pictorial image. At this time, his paintings were conceived as a means of transmitting information through materials, having nothing to do with the information being transmitted or issues of display. This differentiation came to be the center of his work, and presentation, the body of the artist’s oeuvre. This quest for another phenomenological space unites the elements that, at short term, evolved to a type of conceptual work or practise. The artist may construct the piece. The piece may be fabricated. The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the received upon the occasion of receivership. Weiner’s highly quoted “”statement of intent”, which dates back to 1969, meant to function as a guideline for the operation of his work, briefly expressing the spectator’s responsibility, and the need to diminish the distance between the beholder and the producer, in an attempt to produce an egalitarian method of art production, revealing Weiner’s concern for the public domain and the search for new spheres of reception. This very ideological stance in Weiner’s practice led to his transition from the visual to the linguistic model. Weiner has exclusively used language as the choice medium of his work since 1967, primordially registered in sentences or parts of sentences, which he presents in posters, texts/drawings on the wall, sound and, more importantly, in books. These statements frequently allude to the locations or the description of the conditions and circumstances that attest to the original act of writing. Weiner’s ensueing work, now transformed into the undated, numbered manifestation of language + the materials referred to, which he registers in notebooks, forming, in purely linguistic terms, statements, ideas and actions contained within the linguistic framework. Weiner thus presents information under the guise of enunciations, declarations and statements. The result construes a series of declarations that linguistically defines the material structure of the work, presenting, in the past participle (conclusive and expectant) facts concerning the material and processes of production, and writings about the materials and the material quality of the text, in alliance with the emphasis given to an egalitarian model of communication. The content of his work, on the other hand, resides in the perceptive reality of a continuously evolving context, a process and a presentness which depends upon the receiver and the occasion of receivership. In an apparent and consistent manner, from the 1960’s up until now, the notion that art cannot assume the preexistence of an audience, but that it should help produce one, can be found in his work. Indeed, the acuity of the translations of his work to the language of his host country produces a socio-historic construct between the work of art and the location, demonstrating the parity that exists between the languages that comprise the work’s context, influencing or changing its reception. HM
Exhibition view
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Press Release of the Exhibition
Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art
Presents 'Towards the End of the Beginning', a one man show by Lawrence Weiner Opening 9th May 2002 at 10pm 9th of May to the 15th of June 2002 Tuesday to friday 10am/8pm Saturday 12pm/8pm The exhibition 'Towards the End of the Beginning', from Lawrence Weiner - specifically made for this space - will open Thursday the 9th of May around 22.00 h. This exhibition will be open every Tuesday to Friday, from 10 .00 to 20.00 and on Saturdays from 12.00 to 20.00. We will be showing a instalation/sculpture presented in four parts as well as it will be shown two DVD films: Wild Blue Yonder (2001-02) and Blue Moon Over (2001-02). Over more than three decades of 'language + the materials referred to', have been the forming factors in Lawrence Weiner’s artistic practice, and the communication about ideas and materials in the physical world have formed the parameters of his work. His work became known by the removal of the physical element of sculpture and by the insistence on common, accessible sistems of distribution. Since 1967-68 that he develops a sculpture based on language that not only assumes the form of instalation as well as a whole group of supports such as: books, comics, posters, songs and urban interventions and art for public spaces. He has been using film and video as sistems of presentation since 1970. Recent projects include: A BASIC ASSUMPTION, outdoor work in the Birmingham Art Museum, Alabama during June 2002 PER SE/POR SI MESMO, at the Palacio de Cristal ans Library MNCARS, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Rainha Sofia, Madrid, 2001 BENT AND BROKEB SHAFTS OF LIGHT, at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany 2000-01 Other museum projects include: TO BUILD A SQUARE IN THE RHINELAND at the Ludswig Museum, Koln 1995 STEEL PENNIES DON’T COME FROM OR GO TO HEAVEN (a work for Dean Clough), at the Henry Moore Studio, 1993 Museum retrospectives Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1998 ARC, Musee d’Art contemporain de la Ville de Paris WORKS AND RECONSTRUCTIONS, at the Kunsthalle Berne, 1983 Van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven, 1976 Important group exhibitions Sculpture Garden, 1990 Skulptur Projekte, Munster, 1997 Whitney Biennal, 1995 Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Pompidou, Paris 1989 Documenta 7 & 5, 1982 e 1972 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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