Dream Exhibitions is a new weekly series that asks artists, writers, curators, and other creative types what as-yet unrealized exhibition they’d like to see. Each week, we publish three to five new submissions. Everyone’s invited, so dream a big dream, and send it our way (Corinna Kirsch, corinna@artfcity.com).
This week, it’s time to give exhibitions to those working behind-the-scenes in the arts: art handlers, studio assistants, and security guards. Still trending: Everyone wants to makeover the Guggenheim.
Theodore Darst, artist
-I’d love to see a show where artists who work with large teams of highly trained assistants were forced to outsource their labor online through Mechanical Turk or Fiverr. For example, what would a Murakami painting look like if it was produced by a crew of semi-professional illustrators working for minimum wage? Does it lose it’s aura? Do some artists’ fair much better than others?
-Inversely, it’d be interesting to see a group show of artists who work primarily as part of a blue chip artists’ team—the studio assistant show.
-A traveling retrospective of all the Pen and Pixel album covers.
-Huge one-night only video art group show at one of those sports bars that has 20 flat screens.
-Good video artists projection mapping on the ancient Egyptian temple in the Met.
-This is bumping up against Kyle Petreycik‘s skateboarding idea from last week but I’ve always wanted to have a show where the incline on the Guggenheim’s rotunda was raised up a few degrees so the walk to the top became increasingly difficult. Ideally one would have to crawl on hands and knees to make it to the very top. Not very handicap-friendly though.
Hethre Contant, artist and educator
Hall of Mirrors: Plato said artists hold a mirror to the world, but for him, mirrors were polished parabolas of bronze. This exhibition will present the evolution of image-reflecting technology throughout history. Highlights include: reflecting pools, obsidian, tin-mercury-coated glass from the Renaissance, an example from Gutenberg’s career as a failed mirror-maker, a Justus von Liebig silver-coated mirror, telescope mirrors, funny carnival mirrors, internet mirror sites, and more!
To The Planetarium!: A multimedia festival for art meant to be experienced in a planetarium. Work includes 360 degree and hemispheric videos, volumetric sound compositions, constellation-finding workshops, LASER shows, and more!
New Car Radio: Tired of the choices on the radio dial? This large-scale exhibition suspends FCC licensces for all AM and FM broadcasters and re-allocates the band to “artists.” This unique opportunity promotes the creation of new radio stations, programming models, listening experiences, fundraising tactics, and more!
HAUNTED GALLERIES: A series of seances with clairvoyants and real supernatural experts in different galleries throughout the nation. Could be televised.
Kat Chamberlin, artist
I want to suspend a live choir in concentric circles up the center of the Guggenheim rotunda. The choir would sing “When David Heard” by contemporary composer Eric Whitacre. The audience would experience the changing harmonics of the same composition as they ascend and descend the building.
That’s the One: Artworks that Sparked a Life in the Arts
An exhibition that would bring together a number of works of art that inspired various influential cultural figures* to learn more about art which ultimately led to a life and career in the arts. The results will hopefully be unexpected, from across wide swaths of art history; contradictorily they may not be actual works of visual art, but perhaps they might yield a bit more insight into the individual selecting a work. The exhibition would take place in one location, but would likely have satellite locations due to selections like, say, the Sistine Chapel which cannot, and should not, be represented in any form other than their original physical location. This exhibition could be reiterated in a Fluxus-like manner across time and space; the only stipulation as founding curator is that my selection, Bruce Nauman’s “Good Boy Bad Boy,” be included in every iteration.
*While leading influential cultural figures should select some of the art on view, e.g. the director and the curators, at least 25% of the art included should be selected by the hosting institutions staff who have little or no wider influence but nonetheless have dedicated their career to art or an art institution—thus the longest-serving guard, the preparators, the shipping department, etc. also have their influences represented.
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