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Letter to the Editor
by Editor
Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery An exhibition review can be a potent tool, as it helps shape impressions of the works on view for a broader audience. That said, viewing art is a highly subjective experience, and misunderstandings occur as often as moments of great insight. With that in mind, Shotgun Review strives to frame its reviews as simply the opening statement in a dialogue, rather than the final word. The following is just such a dialogue, in response to the review of Wunderflater by Anuradha Vikram posted on June 10th. In it, Michael Arcega, one of the participating artists, clarifies misattributions in the original post, and Vikram responds with further consideration of the exhibition. On behalf of SR, my apologies to the artists of Wunderflater for the inaccuracies, and my appreciation to both Mike and Anu for reminding us of the potential for fruitful exchange that is inherent in criticism. - Patricia Maloney, Managing Editor Michael Arcega wrote: Thank you for reviewing the Wünderflater. I really liked the turducken metaphor... hilarious!! Aside from the thanks, I wanted to clarify a couple of things. The second and third paragraphs contain some misattributions. There are no individual projects at all. We collectively worked on every part of the exhibit. There are areas that were "led" by one with special skills--or, as we like to call them "super powers"--but even those areas were designed by the group. The point of this project was to create a work that was completely collaborative. For instance, Kazumi did not make the inflatable; Reed did not make the structure. In fact, Reed was lead on the inflatable, I was lead on the structure, Jina was lead on the Wunderkammer, and so on. Each of us would deny ownership of any individual part of the project. I know this kills the turducken metaphor, but maybe it works as a conceptual turducken. The only attributable things would be the objects within the Wunderkammer. The objects inside the Wunderkammer or mini-gallery are not artworks. They are objects that have inspired our individual practices. They are things that we keep in our studios for a various reasons, inspiration, sentiment, examples of failure, or success. Those objects are a way to understand our artwork, much like the traditional Wunderkammer was a way for the collector to understand the world. I hope that these authorship misattributions can be corrected on behalf of all the artists involved in the project. - MA Anuradha Vikram's response: I do apologize for the error. I think what this makes clear is how challenging a semi-anonymous collaboration like this can be to process in an MFA exhibition context. As a viewer, I wanted to know something concrete about each of the artists involved. Without that, I was frustrated. I would have liked to know what each artist brought to the communal exercise. I still like the layering aspect and I think it works formally whether or not there's distinct attribution for any of the structures. I appreciate the collaborative effort more knowing that it was so comprehensive. It does subvert the purpose of the MFA show pretty thoroughly, which raises interesting questions. - AV  Posted June 12, 2009 4:19 PM (523 words) « Wunderflater: 2009 Stanford MFA Exhibition | Home | Bob Matthews: Garden Ruin » |
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