In a society characterized by an imperative to perform, to be productive, to take part in a time-pressured culture of high performance, artists are now more than ever pressured to work and conform to the demands of professional activity. This is not the only way. In other, more questionable words: Is this the way we really want to work? How do artists manage the imbalance between work and life? Are there creative possibilities in refusal, passivity, procrastination, and idleness?
The exhibition Artists of the No ultimately engages with a number of artistic propositions and works that propose a “No”—refusal, uncooperativeness, diversion, postponement, reluctance, and so forth—as a response to an existing demand to perform that takes shape in the imperative, both imposed and imparted. In doing so—and this is the point at which the exhibition deviates from the claim that creating nothing is better than creating something (“failure fundamentalism”)—the works of art rise above socioeconomic demand (as well as common thinking and behavior) by frustrating all expectations: provoking a situation and a number of scenarios in which the potential for difference becomes tangible through imagination and aesthetic experience. Rather than becoming an insufficient gestural proxy to put another artistic act into action, perhaps the exhibition creates a moment in which specific solutions and answers remain provocatively latent, for the right reasons. How could we possibly afford not to work, to perform—financially and existentially? What it does show is that not “getting with the program”—breaking the spell of the pressure to produce for the sake of production, putting aside for a moment the overwhelming and saturated system of infra-artistic mediations, createing some space to breathe, being and spending some time with oneself, thinking—could equally be reached and established through artwork as a kind of performing dissent. Take your time.
Artists
Nina Beier (DK) & Marie Lund (DK), David Raymond Conroy (UK), Ryan Gander (UK), Dora Garcia (ES), David Sherry (IE), Pilvi Takala (FI)Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk
Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk is a writer and curator. He holds a BA in Art History and Visual Culture from the University of Utrecht, and an MA in Curating from the London Metropolitan University, delivered in conjunction with the Whitechapel Gallery. He has worked at a number of institutions including SMBA (Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam) and DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation). Recent exhibition projects include Reading Complex (Seventeen Gallery/The Government Art Collection/The Showroom) in London; Swedenborg Epic. in London; as well as The Event of Reality Applied Knowledge/Fiction. He edited the anthology and hypothetical catalogue None of the Above (2011) on curating and the curatorial in the key of fiction. His publications include, among others, “Untitled” (Constants Are Changing) on the works of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, published in 2010.
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