We Went to Petzel: We May Never Return

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on September 10, 2014 · 33 comments Reviews

beshty install

Walead Beshty’s Performances Under Working Conditions, installation view.

Petzel
456 West 18th Street
New York, NY

Allan McCollum, The Shapes Project: Perfect Couples
What’s on view: Flat, wooden abstract shapes painted a single color and arranged on the wall in a grid. The abstract shapes resemble toys, and are organized by tonal range.

Walead Beshty, Performances Under Working Conditions
What’s on view: Copper plates that have been sized to fit the desks of workers at Petzel and then marked by their fingerprints, coffee cups, and mouses (their labor) over the summer months. In the center of the gallery, black boxes that look like over-sized binders (or regular sized tombstones) rest on a white plinth. There is also a letterpress replica of a workplace notice on minimum wage by the New York State Department, and a stack of takeaway posters filled with government documents detailing information about Federal State and Labor Laws.

Paddy: These shows made me never want to visit Petzel again. Admittedly Walead Beshty’s show was better than I anticipated—after reading the press release, I lamented the pseudo-intellectual content of this important use-residue. Now that I’ve seen the show, I can say that at least a modicum of effort was put into the concept of labor. I’m a little confused, though, about how it all connects. What is the relationship between the traces of one person’s work and their compensation? Why does the legalese of their compensation have to be “gilded” in letterpress? How much sweat counts as labor? Maybe I would have taken this piece a little more seriously if Beshty had paid the gallery assistants and directors for the sweat that made these pieces—they are credited by name in the page-long titles documenting production costs and materials—but then again, who cares? Gallery workers get paid adequately relative to, say, security guards, so who is this piece even talking to outside the art world?

Corinna: If you look hard enough for clues to finding out the cold, hard facts about labor and value—and I don’t subscribe to the brand of art that requires art-goers to investigate into meaning that may or may not be there—they might be found in the titles. Looking at “Reception 1,” buried within the title is the record that the work’s production cost was $42,933.00. Same for the “Reception 2,” “Reception 3,” and “Reception 4” panels. The “Directors 1” panel cost $74, 683.00” in production. Compared with the $8.00/hour minimum wage listing on the wall, this discrepancy seems enough to make anyone want to quit the art world. Beshty didn’t. He just points out, buried in the titles, that there’s an economic gap.

Paddy: So maybe the point here is that regardless of what industry you come from—whether we’re talking commissions and tips or flat rates and salaries—the product can’t be made without all these workers? I dunno. It’s a pretty muddy concept for a piece that’s not very complicated to begin with. And did we really need a bunch of used copper desk plates to figure out that labor is valued differently? My guess is that the director who gets a commission from all this nonsense is gonna say “yes.”

Allan McCollum, "The Shapes Project: Collection of One Hundred and Eight Perfect Couples," 2005/2012. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Allan McCollum, “The Shapes Project: Collection of One Hundred and Eight Perfect Couples,” 2005/2012. Courtesy the gallery.

Whatever the case, Allan McCollum is the more serious offender IMO. This is a show that attempts to kill its audience with tedium. At the front of the gallery are stacks of binders documenting McCollum’s process—he’s made a system that allows him to make a unique object for every person in the world—which in the end will be 31,000,000,000 objects. Grids of colored abstract squiggles line the walls. This particular show pairs these blobs, supposedly creating an analogue to human relationships.

Yeah, right. This is an abstract Disneyland, where every object neatly matches its partner and everything looks the same. Every object exists in harmony with every other object. Darker tones are paired with other darker tones, and lighter tones are paired with other lighter tones. The arrangement would read as racially charged if the entire project weren’t so obviously driven by meaningless process-based formalism. The Shapes Project represents the absolute worst of the genre.

Corinna: Those binders look like they’re supposed to add some sort of scientific research or backing to this project. But just to verify, let’s read about what’s inside the binder marked “How the 72 “ab arrays” (the “tops arrays”) are formed”:

mccollum binder

Hm. I so hope this is meant to be a conceptual joke on technical language, rather than some quasi-scientific gobbledygook leading to a whole lot of formalism. Who’s going to take this process seriously? Really—is this a joke?

{ 33 comments }

Guest September 10, 2014 at 2:53 pm

If you take Beshty’s work to task for
a lack of intellectual rigor, I can agree. Conceptual art must be tight.

Without seeing the show, though,
my initial impression was that
you are too hard on Allan
McCollum.

McCollum’s work, from the photos
you took, seem to be a completely
valid and
mildly enjoyable piece of process-art.

The blobs are intellectually
consistent. The instructions are clear and repeatable.
They aren’t a joke. They are
well thought out. It’s a
consistent system for making a
piece of unique but same art for
everybody on Earth. I understood
them and could follow them
without a problem. I think
Corinna’s beef is that they are
not easily understood or
executed by someone without
graphic production experience.
That’s not completely fair. One
should not have to always assume
an audience of the lowest common
denominator.

Formally, McCollum’s piece
works. He’s half there. But what
is it working for? On a visceral
level, what’s so great about
those colored blobs? Quantity is
their only quality.

Is there still an intrinsic value in a
good process? It’s 2014.
Algorythms — newish concepts in
1969 — are now part of the everyday lexicon. Sol LeWitt had a
retrospective at the MoMA in the
late 70s. Museums and
corporations started
incorporating “consistent
variation” systems into their
logo/identity programs a decade
ago. The field of process art is
colonized land; the pioneers are
have passed. McCollum’s work
lives in a suburb.

Instruction based or process-art
is no longer interesting as experimental work. It can still be good work, but the
means can no longer be the ends.
Process must now be evaluated by
the product it makes. Not just
the elegance or novelty of the
making.

McCollum’s thing like a well
painted ab-ex piece now. It’s fair to evaluate the work as the work, and not as the process that made the work. As work, they are fairly undistinguished serial shapes — nothing new nor exceptionally well crafted as shapes.

So yeah, you’re right after all. But the wholesale dismissal of formalism is too much, perhaps. There are true pleasures in formal work analgous to experience of listening to pure music. Why trash the roses just because you don’t smell them?

Phillip Niemeyer September 10, 2014 at 3:00 pm

If you take Beshty’s work to task for a lack of intellectual rigor, I can agree. Conceptual art must be tight.

Without seeing the show, though, my initial impression was that you are too hard on Allan McCollum.

McCollum’s work, from the photos you took, seem to be a completely valid and mildly enjoyable piece of process-art.

The blobs are intellectually consistent. The instructions are clear and repeatable. They aren’t a joke. They are well thought out. It’s a system for making a
piece of unique but same art for everybody on Earth. I understood them and could follow them without a problem. I think Corinna’s beef is that they are not easily understood or executed by someone without graphic production experience. That’s not completely fair. One should not have to always assume an audience of the lowest common denominator.

McCollum’s process seems sound. He’s half there. But what is it working for? On a visceral level, what’s so great about those colored blobs? Quantity is their only quality.

Is there still an intrinsic value in process for the sake of process? It’s 2014.
Algorythms — newish concepts in 1969 — are now part of the everyday lexicon. Sol LeWitt had a retrospective at the MoMA in the late 70s. Museums and corporations started incorporating “consistent variation” systems into their logo/identity programs a decade ago (The Brooklyn Museum logo by 2×4, for example). The field of process art is colonized land. The pioneers are have passed. McCollum’s work
lives in a suburb.

Instruction based or process-art is no longer interesting as experimental work, but it can still be good work. The means can no longer be the sole ends. But means are part of the ends. Process-thinking in design and art has taught us that how we do things does matter, it’s just not the only thing that matters. Process must be evaluated by the product. Elegance or novelty in the making is not enough.

McCollum’s thing like a well painted ab-ex piece now. How he made it is not new. And the work can and should be fairly evaluated on the product alone, regardless of and not as the process. As work, they are fairly undistinguished serial shapes —
nothing new nor exceptionally well crafted.

So yeah, you’re right after all. But the wholesale dismissal of formalism is too much, perhaps. There are true pleasures in formal work analgous to experience of listening to pure music. Why trash the roses just because you don’t smell them?

Paddy Johnson September 10, 2014 at 6:04 pm

This is a brilliantly argued point. In answer to your question an analogy of sorts: I never get tired of looking at flowers, but I do grow weary of looking at piles of rocks. For me, this is a little more like rocks than roses.

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 12:00 am

Actually, Paddy, it was the beauty of grains of sand that influenced me. But, yes, rocks and flowers also. My generation was hugely influenced by Zen gardens, of course. And I grew up near a beach.

Boxmug September 10, 2014 at 10:26 pm

you seemed to be hard on McCollum as well…rightfully so.

AllanMcNYC September 10, 2014 at 11:56 pm

Phillip could never be as hard on me as I am on myself, believe me.

Anonymous September 10, 2014 at 3:17 pm

I think you two are getting close to where he wants you to go, but for some reason you’re suspicious that you’re in the wrong place. He’s not imagining some twee perfect world, it’s not romantic work at all in my view. It’s brutally existential. His project, which I think is and will remain very important, is a scathing rebuke of individuality, of expression, of human investment in our own endeavors despite their obvious absurdity. All art, all love, everything is subject to some giant heavenly binder of algorithms. Instead of the process of deriving billions of shapes, they would describe the chemical processes that rule the universe and predetermine every quantum event that will ever happen.

If your experience is that looking at the shapes is tedious, you’re having the right experience. They are aggressively, hostilely tedious, and that’s always been the way his work is. It’s not “formalism” except insofar as the form is tightly integrated with the thinking. Certainly the goal is not formal beauty in any way related to taste. There are lots of other dimensions to the project, including market critique and the psychological ramifications of being the person to make this work, but they probably aren’t germane to the points you were making.

Keep in mind, too, that McCollum’s work, which has always been about similar things, emerged in the 70’s. While purporting to escape the problematic ideology of expressionism, minimalism had just further solidified criteria of beauty and phenomenological engagement with “specific objects.” McCollum has been trying to actually take that train of thought to its logical conclusions, and has done so very admirably and with surprising and strange results.

Paddy Johnson September 10, 2014 at 5:57 pm

I love this comment—it sheds a lot of light on the artist’s intentions—but I do think it means I don’t like the work. I mean, those images don’t come with a text about the artist’s intentions, and I think that’s necessary to interpret the work properly. The only frame we have is the gallery space and the market that space represents. If there’s a market critique here, it has to be made more obvious, because it’s not something you can embed in an algorithm.

Boxmug September 10, 2014 at 9:51 pm

I think Anonymous (above) is McCollum. lol Bolstering this project with philosophical reference or using “common people” as a kind of street cred (see cookie cutter project) is exploitative at worst or worn out relational bs at best. Market critique is well covered too. Besides, if McCollum was really trying to make a statement on that level he would forgo the pretty (marketable) colors and give the shapes away for free. While McCollum has done similar things in the past this is in fact a relatively recent project and he does not stand alone doing works like this. Gormely’s Feild sculptures cir.1991 touched on this kind of thing as did Ai Weiwei with his porcelain seeds. Just two examples of MANY. The formal exploration element can be found in Josef Albers (Structural Constellation drawings) that predate McCollum and then there is the tedium of Opalkas single project.

Guest September 10, 2014 at 10:19 pm

Opalka’s project definitely rivals McCollum’s atta’boy project as far as the tedium/endurance thing.

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 12:03 am

No, Mr. Smartypants Guest, I’m not Mr. Anonymous, I’m just Allan McCollum. I’m not THAT shy. If you find out who that wonderful anonymous person is, let me know! And BTW, my 1987 “Individual Works” project (over 30,000 unique cast objects) was done well BEFORE Gormely’s Field project (which I totally love), and decades before Weiwei’s works — so I could maybe claim a copyright on creating multitudes! Unless Opalka already did. Or Sol LeWitt.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 10:21 am

whoa!? don’t malfunction you insecure robot you! lol

Listen, you could have another profile or THIS might not be the real McCollum. Originals are slippery in this day and age. I mentioned Gormely and Weiwei in regards to the usage of OTHERS in the act of mass production, pay attention. and did you deliberately skip over Josef Albers? That was gracious of you to mention LeWitt though although we see you do begrudge Opalka. McCollum, you are unoriginal…take that as a compliment.

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 1:22 pm

lol, you re such a hater! In my early years as an artist, in the 1960’s, hating older artists wasn’t a factor in anyone’s thinking, it was a “move on” generation and being thankful for doors opened by others, and not wasting time figuring out how to hate. My guess is that being a hater is just a way to displace self-loathing; but then I’m not really a psychoanalyst. Still, I can’t imagine “hating” being a beneficial occupation of one’s time. I guess I’m really old fashioned. And BTW, I was also copying Robert Watts, Jean Arp, and the “Futurist Flowers” of Giacomo Balla, in case you need a stronger argument about my lack of originality.” PS: your love for Dave Hickey tells us all we need to know about you: Hickey hates anything that happens in any urban area! So I guess he opened a door for you.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 10:37 am

…now go read some more Baudrillard

Paddy Johnson September 11, 2014 at 10:38 am

Quit trolling.

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 1:01 pm

Who?

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 2:20 pm

Who?

AllanMcNYC September 16, 2014 at 11:40 pm

Who?

AllanMcNYC September 10, 2014 at 11:50 pm

No, Mr. Smartypants Guest, I’m not Mr. Anonymous, I’m just Allan McCollum. I’m not THAT shy. If you find out who that wonderful anonymous person is, let me know! And BTW, my 1987 “Individual Works” project (over 30,000 unique cast objects) was done well BEFORE Gormely’s Field project (which I totally love), and decades before Weiwei’s works — so I could maybe claim a copyright on creating multitudes!

Corinna Kirsch September 11, 2014 at 11:01 am

I get where you’re coming from, but I wasn’t saying there’s a twee, romantic vision out there. The works on the wall aren’t aggressively tedious; they look pretty, actually. So it’s hard to combine the two, in my mind. IF formal beauty was not an object, and if this is the logical end of a conceptual argument, then I’d expect the argument to be solidly laid out in the binders on view. Otherwise, the gallery’s standalone snippet of McCollum’s process fails if the process has been subsumed through presentation.

AllanMcNYC September 17, 2014 at 8:28 pm

But Corinna, don’t you already combine the two by being pretty and tedious yourself? It is difficult. I sort of want to meet you and yet I don’t, at the same time! 🙂

Boxmug September 10, 2014 at 9:58 pm

I think Anonymous (below) is actually McCollum. lol Bolstering this project with philosophical reference or using “common people” as a kind of street cred (see cookie cutter project) is exploitative at worst or worn out relational bs at best. Market critique is well covered too. Besides, if McCollum was really trying to make a statement on that level he would forgo the pretty (marketable) colors and give the shapes away for free. While McCollum has done similar things in the past this is in fact a relatively recent project and he does not stand alone doing works like this. Gormely’s Feild sculptures cir.1991 touched on this kind of thing as did Ai Weiwei with his porcelain seeds. Just two examples of MANY. The formal exploration element can be found in Josef Albers (Structural Constellation drawings) that predate McCollum and then there is the tedium of Opalkas single project that rivals McCollum’s attaboy process.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 3:06 pm

my god McCollum stop already! It’s getting embarrassing. Like I said, I’m not the only one to have a critical opinion of your current work. I already gave you credit for being a notable part of a bigger genre but you have resorted to copying yourself and I’m guessing this is a poetic irony (NOT). lol and you don’t need to name drop anymore we all get your influences. oh, and stop hating on Hickey please. btw, his home base of Vegas is pretty urban. now, back to Baudrillard with you!

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 3:24 pm

and you STILL avoid Josef Albers. lol

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 10:41 am

this is a legitimate exchange paddy. were you trolling with your article? McCollum was the one getting nasty…I’m sure you will not have the decency to leave this up.

Paddy Johnson September 11, 2014 at 11:32 am

It seems this is already clear here, but the anonymous comment above was not made by McCollum. I posted it myself for a friend who wanted to remain anonymous.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 11:50 am

Paddy, you said what you said about McCollums work in the article and it was biting and that is fine. So why back peddle now? Did you knee-jerk with your assessment or are you just trying to neutralize the damage or both? I’m not the only informed person who feels this way about Mr. McCollums work btw. Go ask Dave Hickey what he feels about the shapes project. McCollum did some good work early on and he is part of a genre that he certainly was not the initiator of by any means. I feel your views about his current work in the article were on point albeit heavy handed so now stand by your convictions and try not to deflect onto others…labeling me troll was about as harsh as saying you will never return to Petzel gallery again.

Paddy Johnson September 11, 2014 at 12:02 pm

McCollum has, of course, not behaved brilliantly in the comments. I’ve tried to cut him a little slack here, though, since I didn’t exactly go easy on him in the post. Perhaps I was overly worried about a pile on? I’m not trying to back peddle – I stand by every opinion I wrote.

Anyway, thanks for calling me out on this. My bad for calling you a troll.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 12:35 pm

Understand totally, no worries. and keep these good reviews coming.

AllanMcNYC September 17, 2014 at 12:05 am

OMG, Paddy, I’m so sorry for using the term “smartypants” in my comment. That was indeed unbrilliant behavior. So sorry to intrude on your queenly insults! Lol.

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 2:58 pm

what are you an owl?

AllanMcNYC September 11, 2014 at 8:15 pm

Ooooh, that hurt. Feel better now?

Boxmug September 11, 2014 at 8:56 pm

oh Allan. tsk tsk tsk

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