Left: Dan Graham, "Project for Video Projection Outside Home,"
1978, digital prints
Center: Atelier Van Lieshout, "Untitled (Living
Units)" and "Untitled
(Kitchen)," 1998, watercolor on paper
Right: Liam Gillick, "Literally No Place,"
2000, wall painting, digital print and furniture
Artists Included:
Francis Alÿs, Carla Arocha, Anna Best, Stefan Bruggeman, Mariana
Bunimov, Minerva Cuevas, José Gabriel Fernandez, Carlos Garaicoa,
Liam Gillick, Dan Graham, Jeanne Van Heeswijk, José Antonio Hernández-Diez,
Proyecto Inicidental, Gabriel Kuri, Atelier Van Lieshout, Diana López,
Mauricio Lupini, Rita McBride, Carlos Julio Molina, Ernesto Neto, Claudio
Perna, Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, Karin Schneider Teresa
Serrano, Javier Téllez, Sergio Vega
Demonstration Room: Ideal House curated by Jesus Fuenmayor and Julieta Gonzalez initiates Gallery 400's architectural exhibition program. A traveling show originated in Venezuela and exhibited in New York (Feb/Mar 2001) and Antwerp (Sep-Nov 2001), Demonstration Room includes artworks commissioned from some of today's most interesting artists. Exhibited as an architect's office the works in Demonstration Room explore utopia and representation through a focus on the house as a rich site of experimentation through the 20th century. Ranging from Karin Scheidner’s parodic Coca-Cola House to Atelier Van Lieshout’s conflation of domestic security and domestic bliss to José Gabriel Fernández’ elegant evocations of a bull fighter’s cape as a architectural enclave to Teresa Serrano’s documentary video of nomadic hermit crabs, the works included explore what a house can be and the ever present utopic basis of these possibilities. At the same time other works activate viewers’ self-reflexive examinations of their positions within the exhibition and its space. Both the conceptual nature of the work and the self-reflexive design of the exhibition (which takes El Lissitzky's 1920s Demonstration Room as its inspiration) engage the gallery visitor into a productive exchange between 'reading' and 'meaning.'
Jesús Fuenmayor is an independent curator, writer and teacher. His most recent projects include Proposals for Urban Renewal in the 2000 Havana Biennial. Julieta González is Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela. Both live in Caracas.
