EXHIBITION

Ariel Reichman: Franco Vaccari

The Agency Gallery, London, City Of London, 09/05/2015 - 10/31/2015

66 Evelyn Street, London

ABOUT

When the Agency gallery was founded one of the first discussions was centred on the perceived crisis of conceptual art. In a return to this line of thought and an exploration of the wider application of the term the practice of Ariel Reichman (1979) will be presented alongside and analysed in relation to selected works by the eminent Italian conceptual artist Franco Vaccari (1936).

The exhibition was conceived in a collaboration between Silvia Meloni and Bea Herhold de Sousa who found that Reichman’s work Dear Felix, I am sorry but we are just too scared to fly (PSM Gallery, Berlin, 2013), itself created in homage to Felix Gonzalez Torres, also mirrored Franco Vaccari’s Esposizione in tempo reale n° 19, Codemondo, (Venice Biennale 1980). Both artists explore the primordial feelings and reactions that are provoked by visitors hearing their own voices, which were recorded live and played back within the gallery space.

Vaccari ‘s series of Espozioni in Tempo Reale (Exhibtions in Real-Time) are immersive works created as temporary installations, which required the interaction of the audience to complete. Leave on the walls a photographic trace of your fleeting visit reads the simple instruction of Esposizione in Tempo Reale 4. In the age of the Polaroid, the first “Selfies” created in a photo booth were left behind by the spectator turning the installation into a space of public interest and the audience complicit with the artist. The device, which was originally positioned in public spaces, was installed at the prestigious Venice Biennale, subverting the criteria of the exhibition process. The 'technological subconscious' of the camera - a term coined by Vaccari- acted in lieu of the artist, and it enabled the visitor to act with freedom of expression and incorporate their ideas into the overall artwork. The questioning of the auteur had begun.

Today we find ourselves in a different era, one, where the power of the audience has resulted in a destabilisation of the artist’s conceptual control over the media, see the current spat between Instagram users and Richard Prince’s appropriations. The audience is no longer in awe. Vaccari appears like a visionary today with Esposizione in Tempo Reale n. 7: Mito Instantaneo (Galleria 291, Milan, 1974), where photographs were taken by the artist of members of his audience, with the resulting photograph projected large scale in an adjacent room, exhibited and admired by the models themselves all during the opening of the show itself. Everything was resolved, from the creation of the exhibition to the definitive experience of the work.
 
In the era of the avatar Ariel Reichman grapples with the effect of media oversaturation on the direct experience of art. Reichman devised three works, which respond to Franco Vaccari’s work within the given parameters of his own practice. The gallery is no longer the space for the event, the representation of the exhibition online or the facebook ‘like’ are replacing the actual experience of the work with the acknowledgement of the opportunity for experience. Reichman counters this by soliciting the audience’s particpation. Continuing the form of leaving a tracerequires the viewer to leave a token as a trace of their visit. The tokens, displayed on a territory marked by the artist, create the work and its significance. In a nod to the Jewish tradition of leaving a stone on the grave you have visited, Reichman renders the gesture compulsory and the visit to the site of the exhibition inevitable. The concept connects the piece to other works by Reichman which refer more directly to the frequency of lives lost within an Israeli context and the immediacy of the ritual surrounding burial and memory in the exhibition 1200 kg of Dirt at the Petach Tikva Museum last year.  A further work challenges the visitor’s participation to come into being, while another involves the viewer in a theatrical experience, which fades the moment it is enacted.
 
Reichman’s work asks for the audience to come forward once more and in doing so experience the works of Vaccari which almost fifty years ago foresaw the fundamental change the media would bring to our engagement with art.

For More Information

APT ARTISTS ON VIEW

Ariel Reichman

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