Artists Space

Group Material Show and Tell

Symposium
October 24, 2010, 7pm

Program

AIDS Timeline and Late 20th Century America
Richard Meyer
Communities of Shared Interest
Ute Meta Bauer
Steve Kurtz in conversation with former members of Group Material:
Doug Ashford
Julie Ault
Liliana Dones
Thomas Eggerer
Tim Rollins

Photograph of two figures, one in a suit, one in a suit and brown trenchcoat, striding across a city street. The facade of the buildings behind them is covered with a colorful mural and a long line of alternating, bright red and yellow posters. A large building sign above the posters reads "S. KLEIN."
[Photograph of two figures, one in a suit, one in a suit and brown trenchcoat, striding across a city street. The facade of the buildings behind them is covered with a colorful mural and a long line of alternating, bright red and yellow posters. A large building sign above the posters reads "S. KLEIN."]

By insisting that the presentation of art could approach the experience of dialogue and dissent, we showed that when art addresses us as aspects in conversation, we can experience art as an array of personified encounters. We created a site where multiple and conflicting forms and histories cross over and through one another, mutating into paradoxical and unexpected notions of how we could define ourselves as humans. When artworks are engendered as persons in dialogue, the experience of art can make a rebellion.

– Doug Ashford, "An Artwork is a Person," essay from Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material, 2010

It had been clear that a time would come when some of us would want to revisit GM and fashion inquiries and accounts, but that we needed the distance of time to do so properly in part because the emotional dimensions of ending a long term collaboration clouded our capacity to think analytically and freely about how exactly such a project might be generated with aims, means, and methods. For me, buying time so that we could eventually do justice to the subtleties of Group Material's practice and production was also motivated by the desire for an unencumbered phase to develop my own individual creative interests, voice, and identity.

– Julie Ault, "Case Reopened: Group Material," essay from Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material, 2010

Artists Space would like to thank all the speakers, Marvin Taylor at Fales, Andrea Rosen for her generous support, and Elinor Jansz at Four Corner Books, London.