The Art Institute of Chicago

Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place, 1990 by Gary HillAuthor(s): Daniel SchulmanSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, Modern and ContemporaryArt: The Lannan Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago (1999), pp. 72-73+100Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4113003 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 20:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Art Institute of Chicago is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Instituteof Chicago Museum Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:16:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Gary Hill (AMERICAN; BORN 1951)

Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place, 1990 Mixed media; niche: 40.6 x 137.2 x 167.6 cm (16 x 54 x 66 in.) [see p. 91]

ike most of Gary Hill's video-installation projects, Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place

explores the complex relationship between the body and language, or being and knowing. The piece consists of sixteen video monitors positioned within a deep niche.

Varying in size from twenty-three inches to one-half inch, the cathode-ray tubes, which have been stripped from their

housings, present tightly cropped video images of a male nude at rest: strange, human landscapes comprised only of rib cage, ear, hand, forehead, neck, spine, or mouth, all

barely animated by the movement of breathing or swallow-

ing. Two of the smallest monitors (actually eyepieces sal-

vaged from a video camera) show pages of text: in one the

pages are being thumbed, and in the other the text is too small to read. Emitted through ten channels are sounds of

trickling water, breathing, the clicking of tongue against palate, and a voice whose statements range from the philo- sophical ("It was only an idea. I couldn't say it any other

way") to the practical ("At the level of my mouth. Quick, a

glass of water"). These sounds, in combination with the com-

pelling images, tempt the viewer to come as close as physically possible to the piece.

Although Hill brings to his video installations concerns derived from post-modern, deconstructionist literary the-

ory that challenge the perceived unity and purity of mod-

ernism, his work operates on a very direct level. The Art Institute's richly textured but disturbing piece alludes to a number of interesting dichotomies: private/public, mind/ body, perception/being. Lit harshly, photographed from eccentric angles, and cropped mysteriously, the pictures stretched over the tubes comprise a disassembled body that resists recognition. Hill described the images piled up in the niche as "a kind of debris-bulbs that have washed up from the sea."1

Hill's work seems to confront us with the paradoxical manner in which we experience the world from our own bod- ies, demonstrating that states of seeing, feeling, and naming can contradict one another within the same body. Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place also suggests that our existence is more contingent and provisional than we imagine. Separated from the rest of the world by a sepulchral niche, the

artwork also acts as a memento mori, reminding us that life is not only short, but the processes of our knowing it are com-

plicated and perhaps never find resolution. D. S.

72 Museum Studies

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:16:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Museum Studies 73

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:16:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Untitled (Last Light), 1993, pp. 84-85

i. The original specifications for the bulbs are as follows: ABCO, ten watt, candelabra base, satin white, globe size G9, model #03864. The cer- tificate for the piece reads: "If these exact bulbs are not available, a simi- lar bulb of the same wattage may be used." Gonzalez-Torres allowed the addition of approximately twelve and one-half extra feet of cord at the end closest to the plug for installation purposes. He also stated that the light strands may be exhibited with all the bulbs turned off.

2. The majority of Gonzalez-Torres's light strings contain forty-two bulbs. There are exceptions: Untitled (North) of 1993 consists of twelve light strings with twenty-two bulbs each and Untitled (Arena) of 1993 has sixty bulbs. Untitled and Untitled (Silver), both of 1992, and Untitled (Last Light) are the only pieces with a total of twenty-four bulbs each.

HAMMONS, DAVID

Blazwick, Iwona, and Emma Dexter. "Rich in Ruins." Parkett 31 (1992), pp. 26-33.

Jones, Kellie. "The Structure of Myth and the Potency of Magic." In David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble. New York, I991. Pp. 14-37.

Papastergiadis, Nikos. "David Hammons." In Cambridge, Eng., Kettle's Yard. Re-writing History. Exh. cat. ed. by Anna Harding. 1990o. Pp. 21-22.

American Costume, 1970, pp. 42-43

I. Other examples of Hammons's body prints include 3 Spades (1971; pri- vate collection), which depicts a black man in profile holding a large spade under his arm and a smaller one in his left hand; and the powerful Injustice Case (1973; Los Angeles County Museum of Art), in which an American flag serves as the background for an image of a black man in profile, seated in a chair, and tied up. The latter work was inspired by the 1969 Chicago Eight trial, at which the defendant Bobby Seale was bound and gagged.

2. The Works Progress Administration facilitated the implementation of a nationwide, public arts program by employing American artists during the Great Depression.

3. The term "Other" has been employed in the post-modern era as a refer- ence for entities outside of the "Self." It has been commonly used as a label for distinguishing what is alien from what is familiar; for example from a Eurocentric point of view, it might set apart the non-Western from the Western, the non-white from the white, the foreign from the local, etc.

4. Hammons's use of found objects connects his work to twentieth- century artistic movements such as Dada, Arte Povera, and Outsider Art.

HILL, GARY

Liverpool, Tate Gallery, et al. Gary Hill: In Light of the Other. Exh. cat. 1993. Seattle, University of Washington, Henry Art Gallery. Gary Hill. Exh.

cat. 1994. Valencia, IVAM Centre del carme. Gary Hill. Exh. cat. 1993.

Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place, 1990, pp. 72-73

I. Gary Hill, "Inasmuch As It Is Always Already Taking Place," in Copen- hagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Other Words and Images: Video af Gary Hill, exh. cat. (1990), p. 27.

JAAR, ALFREDO

Barcelona, Centre d'Art Santa Mbnica, et al. Let There be Light. The Rwanda Project, 1994-1998. 2 vols. Exh. cat. by Alfredo Jaar et al. 1998.

Jaar, Alfredo. It is Difficult. Ten Years. Essay by Rick Pirro. Barcelona, 1998. La Jolla, Calif., La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art. Alfredo Jaar.

Exh. cat. by Madeleine Grynsztejn. 199o. Richmond, Va., Virginia Commonwealth University, Anderson Gallery, et al.

Alfredo Jaar: Geography = War. Exh. cat. with essays by W. Avon Drake, Steven S. High, H. Ashley Kistler, and Adriana Valdes. 199I.

JENSEN, ALFRED

Basel, Kunsthalle Basel. AlfredJensen. Exh. cat. by Arnold Rudlinger. 1964. Bern, Kunsthalle Bern. AlfredJensen. Exh. cat. by Wieland Schmied. 1973. Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Alfred Jensen: Paintings and Dia-

grams from the Years 1957-i977. Exh. cat. with essays by Linda L. Cathcart and Marcia Tucker. 1978.

New York, Pace Gallery. AlfredJensen: The Late Works. Exh. cat. 1983. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Alfred Jensen: Paintings

and Works on Paper. Exh. cat. 1985.

The Acroatic Rectangle, Per XIII, 1967, pp. 32-33

I. Jensen had had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1952, at the John Heller Gallery.

2. Buffalo, p. 9I.

3. Most of the other paintings from the series are in private collections, although examples are held by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

4. Regina Bogat Jensen, the artist's wife, fax to author, June 9, 1998.

KELLEY, MIKE

Barcelona, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, et al. Mike Kelley: 1985-1996. Exh. cat. ed. by M. Angeles Lopez and Elisenda Prat; trans. by Gloria Bohigas. 1997.

Bartman, William S., and Miyoshi Barosh, eds. Mike Kelley. Interview by John Miller. New York, 1992.

Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, et al. Mike Kelley. Exh. cat. by Thomas Kellein et al. 1992.

Chicago, University of Chicago, Renaissance Society. Mike Kelley: Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay For Your Pleasure. Exh. cat. 1988.

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, et al. Mike Kelley, Catholic Tastes. Exh. cat. by Elisabeth Sussman, with contributions by Richard Armstrong et al. 1993.

Eviscerated Corpse, 1989, pp. 66-67

I. Kelley, quoted in Ralph Rugoff, "Dirty Toys: Mike Kelley Inter- viewed," in Basel, p. 86.

2. Howard Fox, "Artist in Exile," in New York, p. 191.

3. Kelley, quoted in Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Directions/Mike Kelley: Half a Man, exh. brochure by Amanda Cruz (i991), n. p.

100 Museum Studies

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 20:16:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions