Prospectus: A survey of the work of Ben Kinmont

Kunstverein and Kadist Art Foundation present Prospectus Amsterdam and Prospectus Paris as part of a traveling survey of the work of Ben Kinmont

Prospectus Amsterdam
Kunstverein, Amsterdam
12 March–22 May 2012

Prospectus Paris
Kadist Art Foundation, Paris
2 April–1 May 2012

Ben Kinmont (Born 1963 Burlington, Vermont, USA) is interested in interpersonal communication as a means of addressing the problems of contemporary society. His sculptures and actions attempt to establish a direct, personal relationship between the artist and the viewer, using the work as a mediator. If art is supposed to be an agency of intellectual and emotional challenge, then the artist concludes that the audience should also be addressed beyond the institutional frame of the gallery and the museum, and that contact should be more direct.

Prospectus is a traveling series of presentations in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material will include project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from Antinomian Press and earlier sculptural objects.

Prospectus Amsterdam
As initiator of the overall project, the exhibition at Kunstverein will bring together the most complete presentation of Kinmont’s project archives to date. A selection of five to seven works will be set out each week and for the duration of the show the curators will become archivists there to help the public to understand and handle the works/archives on view. Each of the projects on display will correspond to different aspects of Kinmont’s body of work and will operate as a starting point for a discussion. Besides functioning as a platform for exchange, the archives’ display table will also store those archives not set out for view as well as host Kunstverein’s office.

On March 14 and 15, there will be a workshop during which time some of the projects will be reactivated and their archives updated. In this way, the public will be invited to participate in the growth and archiving of the projects themselves as well as better understand the possibilities and impossibilities of various projects through their own remaking.

In collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Ben Kinmont will also present An Exhibition in your mouth, a historical exhibition of artist-written recipes prepared as a dinner on May 19.

Prospectus Paris
Through the presentation of six projects from 1992 to the present, the exhibition at the Kadist Art Foundation will concentrate on the notions of exchange and economy. Each of the works selected for the Kadist show, generate different economic strategies to integrate the work into society. The projects also offer an alternate reading on the history of conceptual art, one in which the work is understood as a materialization of life rather than a dematerialization of the art object.

Furthermore, as a preview to the Grand Palais’ antiquarian book fair, Kadist chooses to present Ben Kinmont’s on-going project in the form of a bookselling business, “Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family.”

The Kadist exhibition will also activate the archives by emphasizing the notion of exchange through updated proposals by Emilie Parendeau, public talks by Sébastien Pluot and Krist Gruijthuijsen, and the exhibition’s mediation by Hugo Bregeau.

Publication
An updated version of Prospectus, the collection of Kinmont’s project descriptions published earlier by JRP in 2002 (the original edition is out of print), is also being issued. Entitled Prospectus 1988-2010 forty-two works by Ben Kinmont, the new book is co-produced by Kunstverein, Kadist Art Foundation, Fales Library New York University and Air de Paris, published by Antinomian Press, and distributed by JRP Ringier. In addition, a French version of the new edition of Prospectus will be published by les editions Mix.

Other venues and dates

Prospectus New York

Fales Library, New York University (in collaboration with Kunstverein NY)

New York City

Sept.15–Nov. 15, 2011

Prospectus San Francisco

In collaboration with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco

Spring 2012

For further information, please contact:

Kunstverein
New address:
Gerard Doustraat 132
1073 VX, Amsterdam
office@kunstverein.nl
www.kunstverein.nl

Kadist Art Foundation
19 bis – 21 rue des Trois Frères
75018, Paris
contact@kadist.org
www.kadist.org

*Image above:
Courtesy the artist, Air de Paris.