Conceptual art now dominates the art world. It's not the skill of the artwork that's the most important element in the creative process, but the idea behind it instead. I work in abstract ideas - ideas not completely defined - that allow me to create works, even longer projects, that give us something to think about.

For example, imagine watching the news and the reporter tells you something is fact even though you might not agree with it. There's a gap between you and the reporter isn't there? His or her information doesn't line up with your understanding of the same subject. The reporter ignores the gap between the two of you, and you might do so as well. I don't. I take that gap and ask what might it look like if it were a village. Yeah, pretty abstract wouldn't you say? And yet, I've taken this gap between the media and the audience and I've created a village that doesn't exist anywhere except in this project.

Want to learn more? Come to the Southwest Harbor Library on Wed, November 1, 2017 to discover how I do this. Entrance is free and refreshments are available.

Conceptual Art is no doubt one of the most important movements in the history of art. It pushes the boundaries of what we perceive as art and creates a dialogue that is necessary to move art forward. This conversation is one of the most important elements in art in general. However, as we get more into conceptual art we get more into blurring the lines of what art is in contemporary terms. This is not an easy concept to understand because ultimately what is created as art today is, by definition, contemporary art. The problems isn´t that Conceptual Art isn´t doing its job, because it most definitely is pushing the boundaries and expanding the conversation. The problem is that the closer we get toward the blurred lines the farther we get away from what people understand as art. Whether or not Conceptualist artists agree that art has to be understood is irrelevant because art isn´t created just to prove that an idea exists; it´s created to prove that art exists. It´s this distinction that is important. Art is not something that can live in the future because the future is non-existent. It can push the present into the future, but it can´t live there. Therefore contemporary art must be relevant to contemporary viewers.
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An example of this is the mistake that custodians made by throwing away an entire exhibit because they thought it was trash. The work by Goldschmied & Chiari, which was a slew of champagne bottles strewn across the floor along with party decor torn off the walls, was intended to criticize Italy´s consumerist years of the 1980s, which is a little odd in contemporary terms considering that was 30 years ago, but I digress. In fact, it was garbage; not in the sense that the exhibit was not good, but because it was literally pieces of garbage spread out across the room, thus very easily making it understandable as to why it would actually be mistaken as garbage.

Goldschmied & Chiari meant for this mean something. Unfortunately they may have a problem for two polar opposite reasons. First of all a tenant of Conceptual Art is that the artist creates and the museum finishes the piece (in that the idea extends from the mind to the exhibition). Their piece was a critique, so maybe the custodians were actually completing the art beyond the museum by agreeing with the artists that the 1980s were a decade to do away with. Except that the custodians might actually be the new artists in this case because their action goes beyond what the artists intended. Beyond authorship, which is always a problem with Conceptual Art (add into the fact that Damien Hirst is kind of a scumbag), their second problem, even though it was a criticism of something that happened 30 years ago, is that the work is so unrecognizable in today´s terms as being art that someone actually threw it away.

Now, with this latter issue, it isn´t the first time that this has happened. Paintings have been thrown away and sculptures dismantled, so this happens to more traditional pieces as well. But let´s just ask something about Conceptual Art here with regards to Conceptual Art pushing the boundaries: when does art become unrecognizable, and if it does so, does it remain art? Conceptualist artists will say that everything is art so the question is moot. But I say that isn´t true because we must live today and without today tomorrow is irrelevant. We can only push the boundary until the next nano-second, or whatever is comprehendible to the human mind. Therefore, if something doesn´t meet today´s standards of comprehension, even if it´s avant-garde, then it simply doesn´t meet today´s standards of comprehension. In other words, there is something that isn´t art, and this is the definition: something that pushes art so far forward that it isn´t recognizable by today´s standards. In the end, Goldschmied & Chiari can take this as a compliment in that their work is ahead of its time. But at the same time, what´s the point? If it is ahead of its time, and if it´s entirely possible that the piece might not make it until its time is due, then as a piece of art it is, in fact, a failure. Art must be relevant to contemporary standards and it must be understandable in context.

Finally, as with all avant-garde work, which strives to challenge the system that dominates the current art market, Conceptual Art is now the dominant art trend in museums and in many leading galleries. If there was ever a reason to get rid of it, it is this which goes against one of Conceptual Art´s basic tenants: that the gatekeepers of the art world are ill-suited to allowing art to push forward, mostly from the basis that if art is treated as a commodity then what is a commodity will be traded as such. Conceptual Art has become the contemporary art commodity and therefore cannot be trusted to push art forward. In other words, Conceptual Art has killed itself by being the thing it was created to abolish to begin with. And so the circle goes.