Lecture by Klaus Ottmann, the Sixth International Biennial Curator
Tuesday, October 18, 2005, 6 pm
SITE Santa Fe
Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hours: WedSat, 10 AM5 PM
Friday, 10 AM7 PM
Sunday, 12 PM5 PM.
Museum admission is always free for members.
Free admission on Fridays, made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston.
Jennifer Bartlett, The Exact Spot, 2004, Enamel over silkscreen grid on baked enamel, steel plates, 50 x 50 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
SITE Santa Fe is pleased to announce that Klaus Ottmann, curator of the Sixth International Biennial, scheduled to open in July 2006, will give a talk at SITE on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at 6 pm.
Ottmanns presentation, entitled Experience or Interpretation: What You See Is Not What You Read, proposes that since the 1980s the focus of art exhibitions has shifted away from the direct experience of an artistic intent toward didactic illustration of curatorial ideas. He argues that this trend has compromised and impoverished the experience of works of art and impeded the imagination of the viewer.
Choosing not to impose a curatorial theme onto the 2006 Biennial, Ottmanns goal is to let the selected works of art speak for themselves. Entitled Still Points of the Turning World (after a line in T.S. Eliots poem Burnt Norton), the Biennial will consist of 13 one-person installations. Presented in separate spaces, with only minimal curatorial interventions, the exhibition will encourage a more personal and direct experience of the works on view.
This lecture will offer a preview of some of the central ideas that will be explored in the next biennial. Among the works to be shown are a new body of word-based works by the American painter Jennifer Bartlett, a performance by the German artist Jonathan Meese, and a new installation by African artist Wangechi Mutu.
Klaus Ottmann, an independent curator and scholar based in New York, is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books on art and philosophy, including The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition, The Essential Mark Rothko, and the forthcoming Thought Through My Eyes, a compendium of his selected writings on art. He is currently working on a book on the philosophy of the French painter Yves Klein.
Among the more than forty solo and group exhibitions of contemporary art that Ottmann organized for institutions such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany; the Musée dart Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, have been major retrospective exhibitions of the works of James Lee Byars, Wolfgang Laib, and Mark Morrisroe. As curator of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, he instituted a diverse exhibition program featuring artists such as Kiki Smith, Jessica Stockholder, Tom Friedman, Astrid Klein, Mark Dion, and Franz Erhard Walter, among others.
The Sixth International Biennial will run from July 9, 2006 January 7, 2007, with the opening weekend festivities occurring on July 79.
Lecture tickets are free with advance reservation for members at the Supporter level and above. Seating is limited; advance purchase is recommended.
This presentation, co-sponsored by Wolf International Advisors, is part of SITEs ongoing Art & Culture series which addresses contemporary art and cultural issues, often focusing on work on view at SITE.
SITE Santa Fe is located at 1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico. SITE Santa Fe Hours: WedSat, 10 AM5 PM; Friday, 10 AM7 PM; Sunday, 12 PM5 PM. Museum admission is always free for members free. Free admission on Fridays, made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston.
This project is made possible by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. This announcement is partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers Tax.
For further information and images, please contact Anne Wrinkle, PR Consultant, SITE Santa Fe, at wrinkle@sitesantafe.org, or 505.989.1199 x 22.
