A BAD PLACE Art & Language
Art & Language with A BAD PLACE at the University of Kassel
Art & Language create conceptual art that leads us to adopt a critically investigative position towards an everyday place and thus to question our own moral concepts.
Art & Language came to Kassel for the first time in 1972. At the invitation of documenta 5, they presented an epochal work that marked a turning point for their collective practice and the history of Conceptual Art in general. Fifty years later, in 2022, they reappear in the city, this time with a work attached to a building housing some of the documenta Institute's staff. This time it just says “A BAD PLACE”. That's far fewer words than in 1972, but definitely no less food for thought!
The Art & Language group, founded in England at the end of the 1960s, is one of the main protagonists of Conceptual Art. After an international expansion in the 1970s, in which numerous artists such as Sarah Charlesworth and Ian Burn were involved, the group has now been made up mainly of Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden for 40 years.
The history of Art & Language is also closely linked to the history of documenta itself. In 1972, the artists exhibited their first Index, a fascinating attempt to map an ongoing collective conversation. Ten years later, documenta 7 offered them the opportunity to present a major shift in their practice with the exhibition of two massive paintings depicting their studio. But, as they wrote, the artists left the exhibition with a bitter “souvenir” (Art & Language: A Souvenir of Documenta 7, in: Art Monthly, No. 60 (October 1982), pp. 3-5). In 1997, they occupied two rooms with an impressive installation of hundreds of canvases between painting and language. In 2012, they participated again in documenta 13, as guests in Dora García's project “Klau Mich”. Each time, the form of the work was radically altered. Each time, their critical and reflexive approach remained subtle. In 2022, the striking statement “A BAD PLACE” seals a new encounter between Art & Language and the documenta city.
These three words have already cast a shameful spell over other venues. From London to Berlin, from Basel to Montsoreau, this label has appeared on an elegant poster, a wall-sized drawing or a tote bag. More monumentally, it has also appeared in the middle of the courtyard of a French Renaissance chateau that houses the world's largest collection of Art & Language works. More recently, just before it came to Kassel, it became a large red and white banner exhibited in the heart of Paris, at the Invalides / Musée de l'Armée, Paris. In the meantime, the three words have become associated with a place of research where members of the documenta Institute deal with the history of exhibiting, including the “exhibitability” of a (seemingly) dematerialized art, Conceptual Art. From art galleries to museums and private collections to the academic world, Art & Language continues its critical endeavors with a peculiar sense of serious humor, involving both the host institution and its audience.
“A BAD PLACE” is rich in contrast and visually aggressive and directly challenges the viewer/reader: Why is it a bad place? Who decided that? What is bad about this place? Is it Kassel, the university, the documenta Institute, the building itself? Does it refer to the art world as a bad place? Or rather to the knowledge economy, of which the university is a part? When and why did this place become bad? Does the slogan actually name the building? Should we go inside, protest or simply avert our eyes? But then where is the good place? Once we manage to distance ourselves from a first-level moral reading, we realize that the confrontation with this work leads us to adopt an investigative position towards the place, but also towards our own reflections, expectations and even desires. Inseparable from the context of its presentation, “A BAD PLACE” invites us to see the place in which we find ourselves, which we use daily and which we experience collectively, in a new - and critical - light. In this sense, “A BAD PLACE” is not just a bad joke or an artistic statement, but a strong political message. As Art & Language write in a short text in the form of a dialog between Sarrasine and Zambinella, characters from Honoré de Balzac's novel Sarrasine (1830):
“A bad place is a place of resistance. Its resistance is directed, among other things, against the intuitions of its authors. It simultaneously demands and refuses all attempts to interpret it as an indexical expression - as a label on or in some place or another. Bad places are usually places that have been morally quantified. They are also places charged with emotions. And these wax and wane, fade and intensify, disappear and return, get lost and come back. If we see “A Bad Place” as a sign of an emotional rather than a historical or cultural consciousness, would that be a successful operation?”
Thus, this work impressively embodies the unique artistic research that Art & Language has been conducting for decades, between a very high theoretical ambition, a sensitive concern for formal appearance, a lively dynamic of intermediality and the political endeavor to create a great dialogical and critical situation.
The work was made possible by the generous support of Art & Language, the Philippe Méaille Collection / Château de Montsoreau - Museum of Contemporary Art and the Musée de l'Armée, Paris.