Ben Kinmont: Prospectus
September 1, 2012–May 2013
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Ben Kinmont Bookseller
September 5–October 5, 2012
Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco
Openings: Wednesday, September 5
SFMOMA: 5–7pm
Kadist Art Foundation: 7–9pm
Kinmont’s work enacts the promise of art as a mediator of exchange and connection between artist and viewer. This space of mediation is characterized by the artist as “the third sculpture.” Kinmont’s third is located somewhere between Joseph Beuys’ social sculpture and conceptual art, somewhere between the self and the other. The projects selected from the Prospectus archives offer an alternate reading of the history of conceptual art, one in which the work is understood as a materialization of life rather than a dematerialization of the art object.
Three projects will be featured at SFMOMA:
On becoming something else deals with movement from the art world out into other fields, taking as its starting point stories about artists whose practices have led them out of the art world and into other activities and professions. Moveable type no documenta deals with movement from the world at large into the art world, asking about transferring meaning from our everyday lives into something we might also understand as art. Promised relations examines artists’ contracts, and the ways these documents record and manage the circulation of conceptual and social projects like Kinmont’s, both within the art world and beyond. Ben Kinmont: Prospectus is organized by Frank Smigiel, SFMOMA associate curator of Public Programs, with independent curator Christina Linden. More information can be found here.
Three projects will be featured at Kadist Art Foundation:
In 1998, Kinmont started an antiquarian bookselling business specializing in books about gastronomy printed before 1840. The artwork Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to provide a living for your family is materialized as Ben Kinmont Bookseller, and will have regular weekday hours at Kadist’s storefront gallery for the duration of the exhibition. Marking the opening at Kadist is Kinmont’s An Exhibition in your mouth, a multi-course meal of recipes selected from a wide-array of art historical sources presented here on the sidewalk along 20th Street, and prepared by Leif Hedendal. Kinmont will also produce a new series of letterpress ephemera through an activation of the Antinomiam Press, distributed through encounters between the artist and the public in the neighborhood around Kadist’s Mission District location. More information about the opening event can be found here.
Prospectus is a traveling series of presentations in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material has included project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from Antinomian Press, and earlier sculptural objects.
Previous exhibitions in the series:
Prospectus Amsterdam
Kunstverein, Amsterdam March 12–May 22, 2011
Prospectus Paris
Kadist Art Foundation, Paris April 2– May 1, 2011
Prospectus New York
Fales Library, New York University (in collaboration with Kunstverein NY)
New York City September 15–November 15, 2011
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sfmoma.org
Kadist San Francisco
3295 20th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
www.kadist.org
