[Art Dealer research] Jay Jopling.

Rave Reviews

I am currently collecting some of the information and gossips on gallerist and curators.
I wondered how they became successful, and how's their public imagery being established.


Starting from Jay Jopling from White Cube Gallery.
I collected several dialogue that he has, or statement he made regards to art world and artists.


"Jay is very funny and he's the last person standing at a party. It's amazing. He has got incredible energy." He is often frank, to the point of being risque  - Matthew Slotover, the co-director of the Frieze art fair

"He is loquacious and very attentive to his artists, but it takes a particular talent to convince collectors and to go to all those parties and be a generous host. The appearance of generosity is very important."

Jay Jopling-

"To be that successful you have got to be strong in two areas," he says. "You have to choose the right artists and keep them happy, and then you have got to be able to sell to collectors and museums. It is unusual to be good at both."

Jopling has described his work as a "means of establishing a bridge between attitudes"

Frankenstein Game Trial

Curator Jérôme Sans and others /during the opening of This is Fucking Awesome 

F E E D B A C K   A N D   C R I T I C

     This afternoon I gave a trial on my game intervention on the Mafia game, there are several suggestion from the players that I found very useful. 

also it was very fruitful that people who were playing with know each other to a certain degree, and willing to play, and actually put into the role. 

The moderator is a very key factor for whether or not the game would be successful or not, also as a moderator, I have to be careful that what I said and my behavior, body language might affect players judgement.  

• It might be good to walk around the room, so that people wouldn’t be able to guess who I am. 
• Try not to reveal any of the character during the night cycle. 
• Being able to impose strategic thoughts into the players mind. 
• Try to find out a way to manipulate the whole game as the moderator, because the moderator has the ultimate power (MEGA-CURATOR)
• Will the metaphor work?

I found it is very interesting if I keep reminding people that they have to base on their understanding towards each other, also making judgement based on previous events. 

The moderator can play with the memory, and I found it is good to suggest people that they should suspect people’s behavior. 

HOW THE IDEA CAME FROM

Basically the idea came from several texts that I have been given during the seminar discussion, it was involved with a lot of discussion on authorship and the shifted nature of contemporary art scene. It is important that I found the role of the curator requires the ability to not only be a observant also be a predator, Mafia and curator shared several common feature are 

• Dominate Character
• The possibility of collusion (Price fixing with the collectors and auction house) 

It is not to accuse people’s morality, but to think of what is the mean to get what you want. 

It is hard for artists to think they are the civilian, and this is not all true as well. But considering the possibility that after all, it is not everybody who will going to be a predator, so we need to know how to work and how to create the best scenario even if the role that you taken is not the dominate role.  I found the common feature between artists and civilians are 

• Working as a collective
• May or may not have sufficient power.
• The information they know, and the resources they can use, are often limited, and being filtered.
• Emerging artists might often work collectively
• The information of the economic value of their work, the placement of their works aren’t being controlled by the artists during the most cases.  

During the accusation period, is the only time that the artists may have certain power to eliminate the curators, but they have to be careful because the face that curators may affect the situation by accusing another person, or even the critics, and then the artists might ending up eliminate the role who helps them. 




Key to win the game: It is essencial to do during the accusation time (Day circle) for Curators (Mafia), Critic(Detective), Academic scholar(Doctor) to put your feet in other people's shoes, to estimate how they would think and act during the night time. 


It is also very important for artists to question, who is accusing and trying to guide people to support their own goal, rather than consider others benefit? ( Who said this is good art, and how to manipulate the auction price?) 


There will be more allegories for exhibition scenario and the role of academic scholar, Critic later on my blog.  So stay tune. 

Reading on Art as industry and the commodification of art

Collector Artist Network © Borusan Contemporary

     By reading three articles regards to the creative industry and postmodernism society, also the concerns from academia of our current states of economy development may direct us to a doom future. I found there is a annoying nostalgia state of mind that partake in their arguments.  

    The articles of creative money by Goldsmith lecturer Angela McRobbie that express her concern of the creative industry might direct students who are involved or was involved in the creative economy might ends up being put into a situation that requires constantly marketing themselves due to their state as independent designer/ freelance workers and self-employed soho’s will eventually being dependent on contract from big cooperation, which lead to a direction that the income and working hours become unsteady, also in order to get more cases to get involved within the network that pushes these self employers feel the need to go out as much as possible and keep marketing themselves and hope for one day that will be work for big companies.  The cons were that they eventually being took advantages by the big cooperations assign trivial jobs, their works, design, time management, income resources become fragmented.  

    My tutor argued that it is impossible to keep the society working without pre-established institution, company, infrastructure.

    Later I came across the idea of Relational aesthetic by Nicolas Bourriaud, his relational theory was questioned that the existence of hospitality might actually prevent us from making precise judgements for what we are about to acclaimed for.  The notion of constantly networking blurred the boundary between work and play.  Attending openings, social gathering and gallery exhibitions in order to build up a potentially relationship, you are spending the time that you wouldn’t have to before on socializing with people. This immaterial labour being considered as recreation, and it is not being paid in tangible way. 

    Here I would like to discuss about the possibility of working with people that you are friends. In one essay ‘Who’s Driving’ by Beck Shaw, she discussed about that it is nearly impossible to have a total equal relationship between curator and artist. Talking about if the relationship between these two helps with the quality works to be produced, maybe difficult relationship is more artistically fruitful, so stay professional might actually easier for both to work together. 

     The shared feature that I saw within these articles and theories are the build up of relationship in order to distribute, connect with other people. But the building process and outcome is unreliable, there are no a set of rules can guarantee you to a certain path that you chose to walk on.  The reason that I found these arguments nostalgic is because the distrust element within these arguments of the emotion of human being and trying to make us divide the work relationship and private life apart seems very familiar to the early times. 

      I agree that it is essential to be professional about what you do for living but when most of the artists don't necessarily seeing art as a job that they only do it for living, they do it for pleasure and for fun.  It is a road that based on passion rather than compromise.  We still being given choices when we need to go to openings and talking to people that we are interested in.  It is also preferable for me to discuss opinions with friends or people who we had pre-established relationship.  Work relationship could end up become friendship and work environment is also a social space where people who are engaging a specific theme and thus creates a shared memory, so here I argued that under the circumstance that you enjoy the work you do, it is not necessarily to separate work and private life if you are passionate about it.  

     
    Even if there are pros and cons, but I think there is a very important elements that in the time that we lived in, our perception of time has altered in a speed that we don’t even realize it when we are practicing it.  

     Further more, I think relational art doesn’t necessarily only operates in certain social class or engaging with certain class, or among gallery patron, instead it could be generating another way of communicate inside of the white cube - so called neutral space - by erasing the boundary between the space and country, or geographical elements.  Based on the contacts and human connection. It might sounds bonkers in the 60s but now, it is just what we do. 

Final semester and feedback

After the first week of getting my feedbacks from tutor, only one of them I had tutorial with so far, that I have decided that I want to support my novella with a visual content although I still don't know what would that be yet.

So I have just decided to achieve some of my post and focus more on specific research area so that i will be able to operate more specific study.
However, I do grow more interest in the art world dynamic and the whole art market system makes me grow more and more interest.
so I will keep posting about it.

On Monsters

Gothic Literature reading 1

     Due to my research project is highly engaging with Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, so I have decided to look at some of the genres it belongs to, and try to think about an appropriate account for my narrator of the story.  Frankenstein is my structure of the novella that I am about to write concerning the situation and dynamic within the art world, at the beginning I am trying to find out who is doctor Frankenstein in the art world, and who is the monster being create until I found out more analytic view regards to the Gothic genre. 

      From the book “Skin Show” that I am currently engaging with, I read about that there are actually more symbolic meaning within the monster, also people’s fascination towards monsters.  Monsters who are being create in the novel are usually symbolise a certain degree of foreignness, people portrait the unknown, uncanny, and unfamiliar to a monster, in 19th century, monster was seen as a form of various sexual and racial threat to the nation, the bourgeoise, the capitalism.  Also, the portrait of monster is also become a mean to realize racism such as Dracula, his/her figure is being portraits according to people s stereotype of Jews. 

     The power of literary horror, indeed, lies in its ability to transform political struggles into psychological conditions and then to blur the distinction between the two .... use language of race hatred to characterise monstrosity as a representation of psychological disorder. 

       Another interesting point is that the monster is a creature that lingers between good and evil, health and perversity, crime and punishment, truth and deception, inside and outside, dissolve and threaten the integrity of the narrative itself.  From my personal point of view, a narrator is usually a canonical account when they tell the story, they usually stands as a moral role to make readers to acknowledge their morality through their narration.  Somehow with the special feature of the monster challenged the position and authority in the novel.  

     So far it is very interesting for me how people to create an image in which they put in a story by using negative description can make then actually start to resent whoever fits into the description. Here I m trying to reason how does it work. I found out this blurring boundaries maybe an issue of why people can easily connect this negative image together.  The monster can not be create without Mankind, it is a in-between creature, this inbetweeness makes them easily being justified as anything, good/evil, homo/ straight, right/wrong, because there is no rules for this creature, at least not mankind can think of.  

     Here, I found monster is a symbol of something being create or exist before but have difficulty to fit in the norms.  one kind that has no rules to follow, hard to create an system to justify them, has different skin color in which I argued in the contemporary world, skin color has become less effective than it would before, language uses, behaviour. 

Art show = Big Party?

I have just read about Frieze Art fair on Wikipedia, and several links on Wiki guide me to this report from The Guardian: Frieze shows put the 'art' into party, In this article, apart from mentioning briefly about how often you can spot celebrities in the fair, also trying to cannon this idea that when america as a huge country with 38 galleries being selected, Great Britain as a rather island country but has 35 galleries being selected into this art fair is a sign for showing that the remarkable quality and state of the art market in Great Britain.  Well, let s see if that is true.

But I couldn't help to notice that there are a group of artists really caught up my eyes when I read about their works.

The Chapman Brothers

Taxidermia

Interview of Judith Butler

Just finished this short interview of Judith Butler, a feminist, philosopher talking about the trouble of gender.
I really enjoyed about when she quoted from Simone de Beauvoir that we aren't born as a women, we become a women. During her book launch in France, she talked about that in her view, gender is always a failure and everybody fails, but it is a good thing that we fails because the stereotypes of gender can be said as an accumulated affect of social relationship that has been naturalised over time.
She also questioned this set value of marriage suppose to be performed by two people, and why two? Why couldn't there be more people to raise a family, who does they have to be two?

And how does the word "Lesbian" make her feel condemned when the word occurred to her.  Will this condemn me to social exclusion?

These questions about how we perform our gender in order to meet the expectation of the society has kept coming back to her study, just at the moment when I was trying to figure if there will be any answer appears in the future, she said:" I don't have a system, I don't try to reconcile my various works to each other, that doesn't interest me.  I don't think they are contradictory, I think they are process.... It's not a system, it's a process that it's on its way.

Donald Barthelme on Vote

"All right lad this is what we want with you.  
Your mission is this: to go out into the world and pull down all those election posters.  
We have decided to stop voting, so pull down the posters.  
Let's get all those ugly faces off our streets and out of our elective offices.  
We are not going to vote any more, no matter how often they come around with their sound trucks and statesmanlike gestures.  
Pull down the sound trucks.  Pull down the outstretched arms.  To hell with the whole business.  




Voting has turned out to be a damned impertinence.  They never do what we want them to do anyhow.  And when they do what we don't want them to do, they don't do it well.  To hell with them.  
We are going to save up all our votes for the next twenty years and spend them all at one time.  
Maybe by that day there will be som Ravelaisian figure worth spending them on.   
And so, raw youth, with your tentative air, go out and work out will on the physical world.  
We are going to go whole hog on this program, to a certain extent, and you are our chosen instrument.  
We are not particularly proud of you, but you exist, in some rough way, and that is enough, for our purposes.  
You are sub-attractive, Boble, and so are your peers there, but  here is the money, and there is the task.  
Get going.

DON'T YOU DARE TO HAVE BREAKFAST AT THE GHERKINS

On my return day from Venice which is 3 November, I went to London for a two-day trip.
I have always had this fantasy or imagination that the bullet building should be just by the south banks.
And that was saturday morning and I was starving, just got an sandwich (meal deal) from sainsbury which is everywhere.

I got lost a little bit, and after I arrived the Gherkin. I discovered that it was not by the south bank at all.  There was only concrets buildings, office people and a bunch of construction workers in doing some drilling job.
and I was tired and hungry, so I decided to just stand there and finish my breakfast, a package of fruits and a nice ham sandwich, and try to enjoy the urban landscape.
People were smoking next to me, they are white, they are in tracksuit or office costume.

There was one black security guy in front of it, he saw me, from eating my fruit until I start to eat my sandwichs. He didn't say anything.
As I proceed to my last half bit of sandwich, a white-security guard came over to a commercial board from a cafe close by and ask me "are you alright?" and then said something else but I didn't understand.

I happened to finish my sandwich, but it raised my curiosity about why would the security guy to come and check me out. I know ever since the bombing in London tube also the international brotherhood with America might effect a certain negative emotion towards UK. But why can't people just go there and enjoy a nice meal there?

Urban view is everywhere, why do people even bother to find a green place to look at and then destroy a thousand football play field comparable size of the rainforest in Brazil? Is architecture being create as a mean to alienate people? Why is the fact that I saw a guy's arm bleeding at 10pm in Dalston and then no body cares but somebody come to see me because I ate breakfast at 10am in the morning in front of the most common space in modern society?

      London is amazing, there are so many things happen in any hour, but _______________________.

It seems like there is a moral panic which is deeply inhabit in all the citizen's mind. Constantly searching for possible target to doubt, to suspect, to accuse. But somehow the folk devil is no long so easy to spot.  They are not as The Mods or Neds has particular dress code, nor has the specific working class background.  It is a state of mind that I imagine a solider would have when they are in the war zone.  Is the moral panic, or there is actually a traumatic effect rooted in all the British white collar (if this description still appropriate)'s mind. It is a constantly subtle fear towards life.
It's an rejection towards life and freedom, is the people in London actually live under a constant?
Such as concentration camp in a bigger genre, as the fear came from the uncertainty of the future?

View from the right hand side

View from the left hand side

Donald Barthelme Snow White

The commitment from Snow White

"... and if you let me stay, I will keep house for you, I will wash, sew, sweep, cook!"