TOPICS IN ART

Absence (usually uncountable, plural absences)

1. A state of being away or withdrawn from a place or from companionship

2. The period of someone being away. 

3. Failure to be present where one is expected, wanted, or needed; nonattendance; deficiency.

4. Lack; deficiency; nonexistence.

5. Inattention to things present; abstraction (of mind).

Artist Examples:

“Condensation Cube,” Hans Haacke, 1963 (fabricated 2008). Plastic and water. (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden photo by Lee Stalsworth) https://insider.si.edu/2017/12/absence-art-presence-creates-hirshhorn/ 

“Monument,” Christian Boltanski, 1989. Photographs, tin, lightbulbs, sockets, and transformer. (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden photo by Lee Stalsworth) 

“Neither There nor There,” Siebren Versteeg, 2005. (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden photo by Lee Stalsworth) 

"In a general sense, the absurd is that which lacks a sense, often because it involves some form of contradiction. The absurd is paradoxical in the sense that it cannot be grasped by reason." 

Artist Examples:

Cinta Arribas

Gum affair 

Artists

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1994

Paul Kasmin Gallery

Artists

Andre Schulze

Ordinary, Boring, Dull, Unoriginal, Nothing New or Original

"If you describe something as banal, you do not like it because you think it is so ordinary that it is not at all effective or interesting"

Artists

Artists

Lenka Clayton

Katie Rose Johnston 

Artist Examples:

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The Yes Men

Andrea Fraser

Miranda July

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Chelsea Gustafsson

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Molly Kent

Artists

Félix González-Torres 

Ann Hamilton

Martin Parr

Artists

Steven Stallings

Greg Caldwell

Misaki Kawai

Artists

Andreas Gursky

Zimoun

Artists

Artists

Andrea Zittel

Sophie Calle

Artists

"Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future."

Artist Examples:

William Lamson

Mineralogy

The Center For Land Use Interpretation, Wendover Utah

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Hiroshi Sugimoto

"I'm a habitual self-interlocutor.  One evening while taking photographs at the American Museum of Natural History, I had a near-hallucinatory vision. My internal question-and-answer session leading up to this vision went something like this:  "Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? "  The answer: "You get a shining screen. "  Immediately I began experimenting in order to realize this vision. One afternoon I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture. When the movie finished two hours later, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening I developed the film, and my vision exploded behind my eyes." - Hiroshi Sugimoto

Artists

Madeline Rupard