Luxe/Lujo
Exhibit statement
Confronted with John R. Thompson's display, it is impossible not to react to it as a curatorial exercise; a selection of objects, furniture, artwork, design pieces, and crafts that cohere with each other by way of dialogue and interaction. However, as we enter into his practice and the regularity with which he has executed it over time, we must consider the reason why he calls them curated installations. Thompson, beyond generating a curatorial discourse - a script via the display and arranging of various pieces - aims to create a whole: a work of art. He sets aside the megalomaniac attitude of his work as an artist, so that his creations interact not only with other works of art, but with other objects and gadgets, thus exceeding the "allowable limits" established within traditional aesthetics.
Thus it's an amalgamation of pieces which flow in a familiar habitat, guiding the path of the visitor who mingles in a dynamic of culture and interaction. With Luxe/Lujo, The Curated Installation, which the artist opened in the middle of this year at 108ag_projects, Thompson expands his role as a maker of art to abandon himself emphatically to the world of interpretive work.
His sculptures, characterized by the organic feeling of the material where multiple, lubricated roots of resin intertwine to create a web of relationships, is a simile of what Thompson's curated installations suggest. Under this optical lens there is a coexistence and dialogue between Olaf Ortiz puzzles, a Punjab Indian by Phulkari Bagh, a painting made of Lycra by Thompson, a Haitian Voodoo flag by Mireiille Delice.
When photographs of Pepe Molina with a variety of containers of Chinese lamps, bottles of enamel and copper vases. It is almost mandatory to connect 108ag_projects with what Foucault would call rarefied space: one in which "allows those movements, those circulations, those dimensions and unusual fragmentations, that lacunar and fragmented form which makes one, in terms of statements, astonished not only because few things are said, but because few things are said, but because few things can be said.
" Although Foucault clearly refers to the capacity of a statement, I'd venture to say that in this expository mode, Thompson sets forth a statement, a declaration, about the rhizomatic variety of conjunction in contemporary art.
Under this premise, I believe that the real wealth of the installations curated by Thompson, is in it's intention to expand categories, democratize the value of objects and make void the hierarchy of fine art, crafts and objects. His deft ability to produce multidirectional stories surprises us, leading us to reflect not only on the segmentations and conceptual boundaries that prevent or hinder the making of connections and dialogues within art, but also on the few or nonexistent circumstances which allow such displays in an institutionalized space.
108ag_projects, with this third installment of Luxe/Lujo, reaffirms its potential as an experimental and creative space - a node of convergence between ideas, creation, and dialogue, coupled with the intimacy that only a living residential space can provide - giving life to Thompson's aesthetic vision, where the successive exercise of the beautification of everyday objects makes them unusable, and in turn this successive de-functionalization gives them an aesthetic look, making them interpretatively comparable with artistic works.
As new as the exercises proposed by Thompson may seem, they are a palpable and irrefutable representation of the intentions of aesthetic modernity, where the friction between art and everyday objects is in constant movement, making increasingly thin the line between the canonical segmentations provided from the academy; it's not that this border itself has become permeable, but that playing with it has been allowed – a dynamic Luxe/Lujo exemplifies commendably.
Paula Duarte
September, 2016
Mexico City
Featured Artists
Omar Sharif, Luisa Restrepo, Edie Vonnegut, Héctor Velázquez, Marie Antoniette Anderson, Peter O’Toole, Gustavo Monroy, Mireille Delice, Olaf Ortiz Suárez, Alcide, Panca, Kinke Kooi, Pepe Molina, Augustina Díaz Lorija, Dolores Masip, Leopoldo Méndez, Annonymous artisans from México, Tibet, Haiti, Afghanistan, Haiti, Lebannon, China and Guatemala.
© JOHN R. THOMPSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL THE ARTWORKS AND CURATOR'S STATEMENTS ARE PROPERTY OF THEIR AUTHORS.