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"The HUO Drawings" A web-based project by Charles Gute
Online from October 1, 2006
Click individual thumbnails to view larger.
Charles Gute has worked as an editor for numerous contemporary art books, alongside the likes of Hans Ulrich Obrist, Douglas Gordon, Vito Acconci, and Kiki Smith, among others. As an expansion of this experience, his artistic practice explores his role in the wider contemporary art scene and conjures a feeling for the fabricator’s sense of place within the hierarchy of the art world. As an editor, Gute negotiates for cohesion between what is written and what the author intends. Met with his artistic preoccupation with text as form, the imperative to catch mistakes in the author’s name in print has extended into drawings that imbue these examples with typographic character, as with Interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist. The resulting drawings beg larger questions about the structure of the current art market and the elevated role of the curator as an arbiter of importance, with Hans Ulrich Obrist being perhaps the most universally influential curator of recent times. There is a curious significance to Obrist’s ability to achieve cult status in a world where such reverence has been regularly reserved for art stars. It has arisen to a self-reflective wind change in which the role of the curator, or rather producer, has superceded that of the artist in contemporary practice. In many ways, Obrist begs comparison with Andy Warhol in his Factory-like ability to produce curatorial endeavors—from biennials to books to video compilations to the maintenance of multiple esteemed positions in geographically remote institutions to speaking engagements and posing for über hip magazine covers. His ubiquitous presence implies both power and the presence of an extensive support staff in multiple locations around the world, sustained by Blackberry messages. And yet, as much as these observations could be limited to Obrist, there are numerous other examples of curators who balance the same capacity for production—Matthew Higgs, Ralph Rugoff, Jens Hoffman, to name a few, are all prolific in their work and border on magical in their ability to balance copious projects simultaneously.
To view artist's portfolio, visit www.charlesgute.com
Frock, Christian L. "From (Starry Eyed) Vision to Nail." Fillip Review, Spring 2007. Download Gute_CLFrock_fillip5_Spring2007.pdf