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| Chris Sharp. August, 2013 Dita Birkenšteina, Student, Art Academy of Latvia | |
| Independent curator and writer Chris Sharp visited Riga in mid-August, and during his visit presented a public reading introducing Latvian audiences to his creative experience, his latest curatorial projects, and research about the discourse on art, at the centre of which is the artist’s deliberate suspension of his creative activities and abandonment of art as a public practice(1). In a brief look at Sharp’s creative career it would be of importance to mention not just his curatorial practice and his most recent exhibition projects, but also his writing activities. Examples of the former are: Notes on Neo-Camp at the Office Baroque Gallery in Antwerp, Jochen Lempert’s Seeing is Believing solo exhibition at the Norma Mangione Gallery in Turin, the Mexico City Blues exhibition at the Shanaynay alternative space in Paris, all of which were completed in 2013, and Sharp’s and artist Martin Soto Climent’s jointly created Lulu art space in Mexico. As for his writing activities, Chris Sharp is editor-at-large of Kaleidoscope Magazine and text author and editor of Art Review, while his articles get published in internationally well-known art publications including Frieze and Mousse Magazine at all. While Sharp was in Riga, shortly after his public reading I used the opportunity to pose a few questions to the curator about his views on the operation of the art mechanism in the contemporary context. | |
 Chris Sharp. 2013 Publicity photo Courtesy of kim? Contemporary Art Centre | |
| Dita Birkenšteina: You have wide experience in curating all over the world, can you define what a curator is? Chris Sharp: It’s hard to say, it’s kind of changing. There is a recent book by the curator, art historian Paul O’Neill: The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), and his basic argument is that there’s a kind of perfect parity between the curator and artist. They’re both equally invested in the production of culture and art, I think there’s something to that, that there’s a real truth in general. But I also think it depends on where you are, because I get the feeling here that in Western Europe the curator has a different status and involvement than in Mexico. D.B.: What do you mean, how is it different? C.S.: In Mexico I feel like curators are mistrusted, they are not as embraced and central to the discourse, whereas I think in Western Europe the curator has the most power, people believe in them, whereas even in America they don’t have the same status – it’s slightly different. They’re more like agents of the market, whereas I feel that in Western Europe they’re seen almost as artists. D.B.: How do you see the relationship between artist and curator in collaboration, and what are the benefits for the two to gain from each other? C.S.: I think it’s all about having an interesting discussion. I think I’ve probably learned the most from artists. I hate to admit that, but I think it’s true. I mean, not necessarily because they know more – sometimes they do know more – but I guess as romantic as it sounds, it’s a slightly different way of thinking and perceiving things. They’re coming from a much more craftoriented internal perspective, whereas I am coming from the outside. I think if the artists benefit anything from me, besides being exhibited in different contexts, it’s the possibility of having an ongoing conversation and to be able to discuss their work and get a different perspective, I think. D.B.: How about the so-called ‘cult curators’ – under what circumstances do they gain this status? C.S.: I’m not sure. I think in many respects they’re good curators, but they’re also good politicians. They’re public intellectuals, public personalities, I think they do interesting shows, for example, somebody like Massimiliano Gioni is a really good curator – consistent, doing good research, yet also he’s a very public personality. Let’s say Raimundas (Raimundas Malašauskas – D.B.) is similar. There are different kinds of curators and I think for me some of the most interesting ones are not necessarily those big public personalities. Somebody I really look up to a lot is Ralph Rugoff. He has this really nice way of not being at the centre of his exhibitions – which I really like. D.B.: Going back to one of the topics of the talk you gave the other day – the withdrawal – do you think there’s an expiration date for an artist? C.S.: I guess it sounds really bad, but I think there’s a kind of expiration date for everyone. I think it was Chris Dercon who apparently claimed that curators have an expiration date, just as critics do; that they can only remain relevant for a certain amount of time, and for their own generation. And that seems to be the case in general. There are a few who manage to continuously reinvent themselves, like Hans-Ulrich Obrist, but for the most part I think it’s hard to imagine someone like Nicolas Bourriaud outside of working with Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, and that generation of 1990s artists. So I guess it happens with artists as well: there’s very few who manage to continue making interesting art over a certain period, it’s a real challenge. D.B.: Besides curating, you are a writer as well. What do you think, is it important to write art reviews, is it necessary? C.S.: I think so, personally, I mean it gets more complicated all the time, because the fact of the matter is that the curator has put the critic out of business. The art world is so big now – so many artists, galleries, institutions, more than ever, that criticism now happens in this really positive fashion of just selecting. So a curator supposedly becomes critical by working with some artists and not working with others. Critique is very promotional, there aren’t the same kinds of arguments that there used to be which I think in many ways was more interesting, but it’s kind of unsustainable in the current environment. I started out more as a writer than a curator, and I think it’s important to still engage with this classical notion of critique and review, and try to push things along in a different way. But I have a lot of colleagues – curators who don’t write art criticism because they see it as a conflict of interest. D.B.: What is a good art review, then? C.S.: I think it’s important to try to instate the terms with the exhibition, to describe what you see and then to be personal about it. I think I like good personal reviews, and reviews to have a sense of purpose, I’m not interested in really descriptive reviews. I guess I like what the writer thinks, and I like to know why the writer thinks that this exhibition is worth discussing. D.B.: Are there global tendencies in art that seem to be fresh, interesting and amusing now? C.S.: I think one tendency that is starting to emerge and dominate is the Post-Internet group of artists like in Berlin and New York. Another interesting thing that’s making a big impact is the speculative realism movement in continental philosophy, which is starting to really register in the art world, and it will be interesting to see where that goes. And then I think art has slipped away from individualism towards collective practices, and collective modes of working seem to be more important. Also, I’ve noticed the rise and the importance of project spaces. Perhaps that’s something post-crisis, but a lot of project spaces are doing the most interesting things (and I’m not talking about mine, I think there are more interesting spaces). I feel they afford themselves a kind of liberty that no one else in the art world, from institutions to galleries, is capable of having. D.B.: What is the purpose of your visit here in Riga? C.S.: I’m here because I was invited to curate a show at kim? We’ve been discussing it for a while, and they wanted me to come out and get a sense of the scene and meet with artists, so I guess it’s kind of a site visit, and then I also gave a public talk. Basically it’s to get to know the scene – I guess you could even say this is a curatorial residency. Translator into English: Uldis Brūns (1) To describe the discourse, Sharp uses the term withdrawal (from the English “to withdraw from circulation”, “leaving”, “retreating”), which for the present does not have an analogous term in the Latvian language. | |
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