Side Projects (like the Postal Service, but for Art)

This issue is devoted to side projects.  But not just side projects.  It's devoted to how side projects, since we often give them "less" attention and/or fear of failure, become amazing little works.  Here are some really inspiring examples.


Michelle Grabner-The Suburban

I have followed this artist for a while.  When I first discovered her work as a young artist in Boston, I felt she somehow was able to "infiltrate" the "art establishment", yet maintain her identity in the mid west.  She is also curating this year's Whitney Biennial, which is kind of a coup, since it's not often that an artist curates this big art world thing.  I'll get to go in a couple of weeks- the Biennial is up, a huge exhausting survey of American art.  Worth it to see a lot of art all under one roof, and might be the LAST Biennial to be in the historic building on the upper east side.  One could call the curating of the Biennial a "side project", which it might be...

She and her husband have operated a substantial gallery called "The Suburban" out of their garage in the Chicago 'burbs.  So, in my mind, her "side" project (which, it should be said, shows some of the most important artists of our time) becomes a vehicle by which she then curates a major Museum show.  wow.  She also views curating as PART OF her practice (which I can relate), not as a side project, which makes the title of this post null, but I digress...

Group Material

This group began to curate "non art" into art contexts.  They were making their work as a collective against the backdrop of excessive, grandiose macho BIG painting styles (New Expressionism) that were selling at record prices at the time in the New York market and culture wars (NEA, Reagan Era politics).  A lot of their work depend(ed) on the critical juxtaposition of cultural objects.

Though difficult to understand without actually seeing some of the work (full disclosure I have not, but one of my grad school professors, Doug Ashford, was a member).  They were each artists, and Group Material became much more than a "side" project.

This collaborative has been at work since the 1980s, and Grabner has a lot to owe them in terms of redefining curation:  "Group Material, has done much to transform the notion of exhibition "curator" into a verb by treating the installation of art for viewing as an artistic medium itself."


Orchard Gallery

Also born from one of my graduate school professors (Moyra Davey) and several others in her immediate community in NYC, Orchard Gallery operated on the Lower East side for only 3 years from 2005-8.  This group of artists and thinkers, in my mind, continued the work of Group Material and focused in Institutional Critique:  Why do museums get to be the cultural influencers?, Is the gallery space neutral? (answer- no), How and why does colonialism affect art styles, even today?

Bob Dylan, in a 1960s interview, said, “Great paintings shouldn’t be in museums. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men’s rooms. People would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It’s not the bomb that has to go, man, it’s the museums.”

One of the members of Orchard, and the only painter in the group, RH Quatman, came to speak at Watkins College of Art (in January) on her work.  These artists put on heady, conceptually fierce shows that ranged in interest, but was mostly "super smart".   Classic examples of how those who have become the institution can then critique it (look at the bios of anyone in Orchard, they all have some kind of pedigree in the art world). This was a lesson I learned AFTER grad school-oops.