A show at REDCAT takes a too well-trodden path
The pompously titled extravaganza “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Arab World/Part 1_Volume 1_Chapter 1 (Beirut: 1992-2005): A Project by Walid Raad” promises a lot more than it delivers. And that is part of the point of this show at REDCAT: Being put off by what you find in art galleries these days is to be expected, and out of that frustration comes the possibility that real meaning will develop.
Such tough-love tactics may have been progressive in the early 20th century, when artists like Marcel Duchamp rebelled against the tasteful complacency of the status quo and sought to engage viewers more energetically. But now, nearly a century later, they are academic in the worst sense of the term: a tired endeavor with no consequence other than to maintain its position in the art world.
In a nutshell, this exhibition by Raad, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow and associate professor at the Cooper Union in New York, is insufficiently ambitious. It prefers to tread the well-worn paths of sixth- or seventh-generation Conceptualism rather than take a chance breaking new ground. Put another way, it is a house of cards that wants to be a house of mirrors but all too often settles for smoke and mirrors.
The show includes only five pieces, all but one of which requires more reading than looking. And to really see the misfit, you would need a big magnifying glass, because it’s a beautifully constructed and exceptionally detailed scale model of a gallery in which a seemingly terrific survey of Raad’s works appears to be installed.
Unfortunately, the actual gallery in which you are standing is not nearly as captivating. The first piece consists of three overhead projectors showing a three-part text on three screens, giving an overview of the exhibition and an explanation of Raad’s philosophy.
The text begins simply, using the language of grant applications or dissertation synopses. Soon, the art-speak that Raad deploys so suavely drifts into the realm of deliberate obfuscation. There are lots of big ideas and potentially fascinating details, but the Lebanon-born, New York-based artist never connects them. We are left with an unresolved hodgepodge of half-baked notions and an irreconcilable conflict between Raad’s search for the historical truth and his fascination with more freewheeling forms of storytelling.
Three wall works -- “On Walid Sadek’s ‘Love Is Blind’ (Modern Art, Oxford, UK, 2006),” “Index XXVI_Artists” and “Appendix XVIII_Plates 88-101” -- similarly fall into a pointless chasm between fact and fiction, mixing up the role of the historian and that of the artist in a way that makes the work of both less meaningful, trustworthy, compelling.
Raad practices the art-world equivalent of a mockumentary, making up a story meant to get at the truth of things without being burdened by the strictures of objectivity or the tedium of fact-checking. But his art shies away from the unpredictability that comes with fiction.
In contrast, an artist like Jeffrey Vallance generously invites misreadings and acrobatic leaps of logic. The same goes for David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, where knowledge and imagination are not set at cross-purposes.
The only work in Raad’s exhibition that hints at richness, whimsy and true viewer interactivity is the tabletop model of the exhibition. Titled “The Atlas Group (1989-2004),” it is a miniature survey of tiny, framed images and videos.
Rather than telling a story that draws us in, his high-end model keeps us out. It is an overblown version of Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-Valise,” or box in a suitcase, a portable miniature version of 69 of the Frenchman’s most famous works arranged in fold-out, dollhouse-size “galleries.”
But unlike Duchamp, who made a series of his miniatures in the late 1930s and a deluxe edition in the ‘50s and ‘60s so that individual collectors could take them home, Raad makes his for institutions. This leaves less room for individual interaction and independent thinking and accounts for the academic atmosphere of his work.
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‘Scratching on Things I Could Disavow’
Where: REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A.
When: Noon-6 p.m. today- Sunday; ends Sunday
Price: Free
Contact: (213) 237-2800, www.redcat.org
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