Gunnar B. Kvaran: Uncertain States of America

Mario Ybarra Jr.: Dance to th beat of a different drum machine, 2005. Installation with Los Angeles Rave Party Flyers dating 1991-1995, video "misbeHaven" approx. 15 min. and cassettes for listening Flyers and music Courtesy of collection of Haven Perez and Anna Helwing Gallery, LA

Where does the title come from?

I think the title is the best title in the world. And I can say this because the title is not ours. there was an exhibition called uncertain states of Europe. it was by Stefano Boeri, it was an architectural exhibition some years ago. We now him, and this is in a way a legendary title. Working in America at this moment with materials that was so uncertain in times that was so also uncertain even an exhibition that is uncertain. There was no doubt that this was the title. So we appropriated the title with a little twist that the uncertain states of Europe became the uncertain states of America.

Wade Guyton & Kelley Walker: Dear Ketel One Drinker Hello again. The Failever of Judgement Part IV, 2005.

You told that from 1500-2000 artists you had to pick out about 40 to present your view of America today artistically speaking. How do you do it? What were the conditions? What were your reasons for choosing the ones you did? If you had chosen other artists it would have given a different image of American art today.

This was the question that I was hoping not to get...

First of all this is of course a very ambitious project; to sit in Oslo and to imagine that one can do a definitive exhibition of contemporary American art. So this is of course just a proposition that we have done, and of course the most important thing was to gather the information and have the network and the connections to people that could guide you to different places in the American contemporary art. There is of course certain kinds of important cities and universities that situate where things are more or less happening. Of course we wanted to look into what was happening in the mainstream cities, universities and art schools. We wanted to go out beyond that and that’s why we went to a different kind of smaller cities and cities where we heard that one of two artists are doing something interesting and we went to check it out and see what was happening.

So the first two years - and the most interesting part of the project - was to see and to get information about all these houses and lofts that we saw. This exhibition is a collaboration between 3 curators that are working in different environments. Daniel Birnbaum is in the art school in Frankfurt and he is also a critic at Art Forum, writer, philosopher and then we have Hans Ulrich Obrist that has been a global curator and with his position in Paris - the last ten years he has curated for the museum of contemporary art in Paris - and then of course he has been doing different exhibition on the different biennales through the years.

And then my position as director and curator of this museum that is focused on contemporary American art. So together we had to create a certain kind of consensus between us three and there was some discussion about what we would like to present as important, interesting and something that would be new, or at least a beginning of something new, in the contemporary American art world. We had to negotiate quite a lot and I think that for example its very interesting that we quite obviously did not take in the big amount of paintings that have been done in America these past years and which are really dominating the American art world. I think that it's interesting that we did not. And we all agreed that the most important development in contemporary American art was not really happening in the paintings. But we also saw that photography, which had also been very strong in Europe and in America in the years before, maybe five to ten years before, didn’t have the same kind of strength and not the same kind of originality. So, as you can see, there are very few photographers and painters in the show. Then we have eliminated quite a lot of things.

So this of course doesn't answer your question but it comes a little bit closer to the working methods and the project that we went through.

Nate Lowman: Wish You Where here, 2005.

Your are often asked this horrible question; Why is this better than the other one? Which is a sensible question, why did you choose this instead of the other? What are the esthetic grounds for your choice? Where do you go... how do you look into a scene and say now we think this represents something completely different... is that in anyway possible?

First of all I think - in general - you can say there is no real new link or visible movement going on in America now, so we have individuals that are related in one way or another. These are all young artists and most of them are in the beginning of their careers and they are of course included still in a certain kind of context. I think its more easy to see how some of these artist have a certain kind of relationship with older artists like I said before, Richard Prince and even artists like Warhol. But they are taking it further in a certain kind of way for example Nate Lowman who is dealing with new kinds of narrative structures with the combination of his paintings in a constellation of the walls. His form and his structure has also a very political - and that is also something that we saw that was maybe the ongoing thing with quite a lot of the artists - for the first time we were able to see a clear political statement in the contemporary American art. Of course it was related to the fact that we had the Iraq war going on, but I think it was more than that. I think it was also that we have a young generation in American art that is extremely well-educated and is very knowledgeable about artistry in this context and has a certain kind of critical distance to the American society and the American culture and the artwold. Earlier on we looked at Warhol and Jeff Koons and we had a little bit of the impression that they were totally glued to the idea of what was America, what was American culture, what was American art and that they were really representing American art. But you can see from a lot of works in this exhibition, they work with European references.

So I think that its a very interesting open discussion that is analytical on one side - concerning artistry and art in general - but also on a very political level and there are in fact very many of these artist like Paul Chang, Karl Haendel, Piero Golia who have a very clear political message in their works and we have not seen contemporary art - which is also commercial art - that they are so politically outspoken if I can say so. Why did we choose these artists? Of course its a question of personal understanding, personal taste. We had discussions and we agreed that most of these people were adding something new to what we knew before.

Frank Benson: Flag, 2005. 3 x 5,48 m. Nylon Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo

Could you tell us, what is a curator?

This is a very interesting question, because this has become a very important position in the art world. And now we only talk about a curator as something totally new. A new invention in contemporary art. Of course curators have always existed and they have always been working by creating, putting together objects, artworks into an exhibition - that is the basic idea - and its very distinct that of course we have now today the artists, the curators and in the tradition like in the fifties, sixties, it was mostly artists. Most of them were artists. And then with the development of the institutions and the institutions taking a certain kind of power in the art world, we have this art historians and museum people who are now often defined and called curators and they put together the shows of one artist or many artists. That’s the basics.

Matthew Ronay : Mummyhands Bagpipe Psyops (We don't need no oxygen), 2004. 101 x 198 x239 cm. MDF, wood, paint Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo

How was the show received in the states?

Of course there was a lot of sceptisism about Europeans doing a show about American contemporary art. Because there has not been any other, any institutions, doing this kind of work; an exhibition on American contemporary art. So this was almost too pretentious. So I think there were a lot of question marks first of all and then

we got very good reactions. New York Times wrote a very interesting article about this exhibition as a certain kind of laboratory on what was happening. Of course it was not the truth about America but it was a kind of proposition, a vision that of course had the ambition of giving focus on artists in Portland, Miami, Los Angeles and in New York. •

Uncertain States of America, Herning Kunstmuseum