Installation art

I am going to summarise the article by Claure Bishop called ‘But is it installation art?’ from 1^st January 2005. Installation art describes a genre of three dimensional works that are designed to transform the perception of space. But did installation art ever denote anything? In the 1960s, the word installation was employed by magazines such as Artforum, Arts Magazine and Studio International to describe the way in which an exhibition was arranged, and the photographic documentation of this arrangement was called an installation shot. 

The Serpentine gallery announced its summer exhibition of work by Gabriel Orozco, “The leading conceptual and installation and installation artist of his generation”

Ilya Kabakov- environment in which Kabakovs are installed is also part of his work. He makes work large enough for us to enter; installation artists’ are inescapably concerned with the viewers presence.

Installation art of the 1980s by contrast, was more visual and lavish, often characterised by giganticism and excessive use of materials.  The way in which installation art insists upon the viewer’s presence in a space has necessarily led to a number of problems about how it is remembered.

Minimalism drew attention to the space in which the work was shown, and gave rise to a direct engagement with this space as a work in itself, often at the expense of any objects. Since then, the distinction between installation art and an installation of works of art has become blurred. Both point to a desire to heighten the viewer’s awareness of how objects are positioned (installed) in a space, and of our response to that arrangement. But there are important differences. A room of paintings by Glenn Brown is not the same as a room of paintings byKabakov – because the environment in which Kabakov’s are installed (a fictional Soviet museum) is also part of the work.

The term “Post-Minimalism” was first used in reference to a range of art practices that emerged in the wake of minimalism in the late 1960s. In a similar manner to the term “Post-Impressionism it serves to gather together a range of styles that are related, yet which often have very differen, even opposing interests.

Big audiences are assumed to demand and like big works: wall-sized video/film projections, oversized photographs and overwhelming sculptures.”Rather than inducing awareness and provoking thought”

Other artists have turned installation art into a branch of interior design. Jorge Pardo’s funky décor for the café bar of K21 in dussledorf exemplifies this trend, as does Michael Lin;s pink oriental floor design for the lounge of the Palais de Tokyo.

Mike Kelley’s The Uncanny 1993.  The uncanny was experienced as a collection of unsettling sculptures and polychromatic human doubles. As the critic Alex Farquharson wrote in a review “ Instead of feeling we were in a modern art gallery, it seemed we’d stumbled on a horror film set, an eighteenth- century anatomy lesson, a hideous crime scene.

The variety of work detailed above demonstrates that installation art means many things. ”a mode and type of production rather than a movement or strong ideological framework”.