In the Round Almost

Tear off a sheet for a guide to How to Build a House Museum at the AGO and you will discover that Theaster Gates choose in the homage to Frankie Knuckles to include some objects from the AGO permanent collection.

In this gallery, you will find Frankie's signature baseball caps on display, and his reel-to-reel can be found on the first floor of the AGO in Gallery 122. Gates transferred two small Italian Baroque sculptures by Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (Italian 1656-1740) — the bronzes Dancing Faun and Marsyas Playing the Double Flute, both gifted by Margaret and Ian Ross — to this room from their regular home downstairs. They seem to have crossed time and space to dance ecstatically to the house beat.

Note how the Guide privileges the searcher: no wall plaques to explain, tear off a sheet at the table by the elevator and discover that the reel-to-reel player is housed elsewhere in the building.

Gates has chosen to display the bronzes in a case embedded in the wall thus impeding the possibility of doing a 360 tour of the items. The Dancing Faun is displayed with back to the viewer and there is no mirror to permit a view of the front.

Lesson: just as bodies move on the dance floor artefacts move in space and time and the view is always partial, provisional.

dance moves dance moves dance moves

pieces pieces pieces

And so for day 1727
05.09.2011