Museum as Hub: “The Incongruous Image—Marcel Broodthaers and Liliana Porter” Exhibition
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
This event has ended.
“Museum as Hub: The Accords” is a multipart project exploring new forms of curatorial practice and international collaboration. Building on experimentation, critique, and play, the exhibition proposes new terms for agreement and considers whether an “accord” can inspire new methods of communication and production, and perhaps lead to new approaches to exhibition making in the process. “The Accords” aims to address both the challenges and possibilities of working as a “hub,” moving beyond ideas of consensus and shared authorship toward a more flexible platform that supports multiple and simultaneous strands of research, exchange, and presentation.
Two exhibitions conceptually linked in their development are presented on the fifth floor of the New Museum in addition to simultaneous manifestations initiated by Museum as Hub partners in Cairo, Eindhoven, Mexico City, and Seoul. Beginning in February 2011, and continuing through September 2011, Hub partner institutions present performances in one city that stream to audiences in another; publish texts and post them online; share screenings between institutions; and organize exhibitions that further expand the discussion—exploring new directions in Museum as Hub activity.
The second part of “The Accords” is part elaboration, part critique, and part response to the exhibition “An accord is first and foremost only a proposition,” guest curated by Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo. During the development of the project and related manifestations, Hub partner curators began discussing a response to “The Accords: Part 1.” The resulting project, “Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image” places works by Marcel Broodthaers (b. 1924, Brussels, d.1976, Cologne) and Liliana Porter (b. Buenos Aries, 1941) in dialogue. Highlighting several points of common interest, or philosophical accords, that exist between these two artists, “The Incongruous Image” explores ways in which humor, riddle, and self-critique play fundamental roles in the oeuvres of both Broodthaers and Porter.
Marcel Broodthaers famously described his genesis as an artist with the statement, “Finally the idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway,” while Liliana Porter has posited that, “The only consciousness possible is doubt.” Positioning its inquiry between these spaces of insincerity and doubt, “The Incongruous Image”seeks to draw out, through juxtaposition, how each artist investigates the deceptions, dissonances, and incongruities that images and language can produce. The exhibition features Broodthaers’s slide-projection work Ombres Chinoise (1973/74) and other works from the Van Abbemuseum’s collection, juxtaposed with paintings and prints by Porter, including examples from her photograveur set “The Magritte Series” (1975–77). The project takes the artworks as departure points for various conversations about the politics of knowledge to address questions of taxonomy, pedagogy, and display. “The Incongruous Image” is organized by guest curators Annie Fletcher, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Tobias Ostrander, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City.
About the Museum as Hub:
The Museum as Hub is a partnership of six international arts organizations that supports art activities and experimentation; explores artistic, curatorial, and institutional practice; and serves as an important resource for the public to learn about contemporary art from around the world. Initiated by the New Museum in 2006, this partnership includes art space pool, Seoul, South Korea; Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Museum as Hub at the New Museum is organized by Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Educations and Public Programs.
[Image: Wael Shawky, "Telematch Sadat" (still) (2007). Video. TRT: 14 min.]
Media
Schedule
from May 11, 2011 to July 03, 2011
Artist(s)
Marcel Broodthaers, Liliana Porter et al.