Solo Solo
An invited curator selects a singular artwork
11 April - 18 May 2008
Opening Reception Saturday April 12, 7-9pm
Ben Borthwick selects Andrea Büttner’s Yes I Believe Every Word You Say (2007)
FREE PARKING with gallery validation at Borders Books and Music
PawnShop presents Solo Solo, the exhibition series presenting a singular artwork chosen by an invited curator. For the second installment in the series, Ben Borthwick has selected Andrea Büttner’s Yes, I Believe Every Word You Say (2007), both debuted to the U.S.
“As a curator who is committed to engaging with the specific context of where I work, the invitation to present a project at PawnShop gives rise, on a microscale, to the classic problem of the parachute project: curator drops in, does their thing to ‘engage’ in the local context then fucks off again to do the same shite elsewhere. In these situations, site specificity ceases to mean engaging in the specific context of the site and instead ends up as nothing more than branding the gallery with a stamp of authorial individuality of that curator. Which left me thinking the logical conclusion for my response to curating a project for Solo Solo in a city I don’t know anything about is to present a work that is universalizing and non-specific. But that is not really of any interest to me in my practice as a curator.
Andrea Büttner’s Yes, I Believe Every Word You Say is a piece that has its own internal set of operations – historical, formal, philosophical, emotional – that have various connection with LA. But also I hope that showing this piece at this moment in time goes beyond the artwork’s internal logics and engages with the broader rhetorics of the US at this specific moment.”
‘What fascinates me about Büttner’s work is that she is absolutely committed to the political possibilities of an authentic mode of expression and the desire to believe, while at the same time questioning that commitment and desire. She is asking whether it is possible to make or believe in an art that represents an authentic position. The work at one moment implores and registers the desire for truth, while at the next is skeptical and full of doubt. Its own proclamations are undermined by the naïve honesty of its statement. It switches between naivety and knowing doubt and in an unnerving way it is not clear if it is doing this willfully or if this is an effect of the viewers relation to the work.’ – Ben Borthwick 2008.
Ben Borthwick: Is that how you feel when you have an exhibition?
Andrea Büttner: One sentence – the sentence ‘I want to let the work fall down’ is a Dieter Roth quote. I think it’s a Dieter Roth quote. Maybe I changed it a bit… this quote is like an abbreviation of my engagement with his work because it’s honest about how pretentious it is, how shameful it is, to show art at all. Dieter Roth says one has to be honest to comfort the viewer in their misery. That one has to show one’s own misery for that purpose. I think I still fail in showing my own misery.
BB: Is the interview a situation in which you can show that misery?
AB: …Of course it is exactly like art: that it should sound impressive, you know. Like the art should look impressive. But… I have doubts about my work. I think it’s perfectly fine to share this with the viewers, actually.
–exerpt from interview, London, October 2006.
Andrea Büttner lives and works in London, Frankfurt and Berlin. Her work was included in the Wight Biennial at UCLA (2006). Recent shows include a solo exhibition at Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe, and the group show Pensée Sauvage – On Freedom at Frankfurter Kunstverein. In March 2008 her solo exhibition at Hollybush Gardens opens in London.
Ben Borthwick is currently Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, London, UK. He curated Tate Modern’s Gilbert & George retrospective which is currently at the de Young in San Francisco. His most recent exhibitions are Illuminations and The Irresistible Force, both in Tate Modern’s Level 2 Gallery project space.
Solo Solo is exhibited concurrently with the Video Library (on show in the east gallery) screening the permanent collection of video works alongside each exhibition in the main gallery.
Los Angeles based Justin Hansch’s solo exhibition opens 23rd May – 29th June 2008.