Take-Away Art Gets “Twice Removed”

GUEST POST BY ELIZABETH CORR

A few weeks ago, some friends and I attended the opening of Twice Removed: A Survey of Take Away Work at Golden Age. I was excited to see a show entirely dedicated to this concept, a concept that one of my favorite artists, Félix González-Torres, explored throughout his career.

Curator Karly Wildenhaus requested submissions of take away art from the personal collections of individuals, and not surprisingly, she amassed a great set of work hailing from places as far away as London and Antwerp, in addition to more local pieces from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Brooklyn, to name a few. (You can read the full exhibition description here and see additional images from the show.)

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of audience participation and multiplicity in art – two ideas which take away art knowingly references, but then pushes to a new level by creating an entirely removable installation.

What’s so compelling about the take away object is that audience participation is fundamental to the pieces’ meaning as a whole. The viewer, at zero cost, leaves with a multiple, and at the artist’s encouragement, is sent out into the world to re-appropriate the object in whatever way they see fit. This element of freedom, and the open-ended nature of the artwork’s new life, is both exciting and disruptive to the ways in which people traditionally experience art (i.e. in an institutional setting).

As an integral component of the work, viewers are invited to step into the role of collector, a role traditionally inaccessible to the masses for a variety of reasons. And for this particular moment, the “new collectors” dictate the rules of the game by choosing when, where and how to display their newfound pieces, all the while challenging the idea that increased production (many multiples) devalues artwork both in a market sense and in an ideological sense.

Twice Removed draws attention to all of these issues, bringing together an impressive selection of work from well known artists such as Félix González-Torres, Bruce Nauman and Adrian Piper, while also including the work of lesser known artists such as Rivane Neuenschwander (I’m still regretting not having a chance to see her show at the New Museum this past summer).

Walking through the show, I found myself not necessarily thinking about what it meant for these objects to be literally “twice removed” (initially from the museum or gallery, and then yet again by Karly for the purposes of this show), but instead lost in thought about the period in between – what life was like for the object inside the collector’s home. Sure, displaying the work as individual pieces this second time around reinforces the transient nature of take away art, and highlights how insubstantial the materials actually are (candy, postcards, pins, ribbon etc.). But, the pieces I was most drawn to were those that the collector had personalized, imbuing the object with an additional layer of meaning and sentimentality.

One great example came in the form of a homemade candy box. This particular collector visited the Guggenheim numerous times to see Félix González-Torres’ piece Untitled (“Public Opinion”). Each time he went, he gathered a piece of black licorice candy, and once happy with the quantity accumulated, created a display case for them. I loved seeing the transformation from the original installation to this collector’s interpretation, although it definitely made me wish that I hadn’t just haphazardly eaten my Félix González-Torres candies.

It’s been weeks since I saw the show, and I really haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The weather is starting to improve, so make the trek to Golden Age to see Twice Removed before it’s over. If for some reason you can’t make it, there will be an accompanying website and pamphlet published by Golden Age after the show’s run.

Elizabeth Corr received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in African Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her graduate work focused on contemporary African art in post-apartheid South Africa. She lives in Chicago and works at NRDC, an environmental nonprofit.