Exact Imagination

A group exhibition observing the different mechanisms influencing experiences with art.

Curated by James Voorhies

Columbus College of Art & Design, OH
February 13–April 5, 2008

BANK, Andrea Fraser, Gaylen Gerber, David Ireland, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, N55, David Ording, Red76

Made possible with funding and staff of Columbus College of Art & Design with grants from Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Ohio Arts Council; realized within my responsibilities as Director of Exhibitions at Columbus College of Art & Design

Taking its inspiration and title from the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno and his analysis of aesthetic experience in which he argues that subjective and objective forces collide to determine a viewer’s perceptual reception of art—how it makes them feel, what they take away from it, what they draw up inside of them to relate to it—Exact Imagination includes art that encourages both concrete and immaterial aesthetic explorations.

With these ideas in mind, Exact Imagination investigated the authority of the institution and its effect on the viewer. It inhabited the very institutional conditions for experiencing the way institutional devices leverage reactions to art in divergent forms of encounters, either by inspiring an internal aesthetic response to art objects (as does any exhibition or work of art) or by requiring from viewers literal participation in social exchanges.

The artists in the exhibition ultimately examined with range of criticism and humor the institutionalization of art, exhibition-making, academic production, artistic resistance, and other influences that impact how people have access to, read about, study, view, reflect upon, and bring forth an imaginative response to art.

Book, Guide

Louise Lawler, Big, 2002/2003, cibachrome mounted on museum box, 52 ¾ x 46 ½ inches. Courtesy of Dominique Lévy and Dorothy Berwin.

Louise Lawler, Conditions of Sale, 1988/1990, black and white, photograph with printed mat, 16 x 22.25 inches (image), 28 x 32.25 inches (mat). Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.

N55, Art and Reality, 1996, site-specific installation cut vinyl text, 16 x 28 feet. Courtesy of the artists.

Andrea Fraser, A Visit to the Sistine Chapel, 2005, DVD, 12 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York.

Gaylen Gerber with BANK, Andrea Fraser, David Ireland, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, N55, David Ording and Red76, Backdrop/Exact Imagination, 2008,* latex on canvas, various media dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. *Gerber’s Backdrops are not dates themselves but carry the date of the artwork installed in relation to it.

Christian Jankowski, Flock, 2002, DVD, 10 minutes. Courtesy of the artist, Maccarone, Inc., New York, and Klosterfelde, Berlin.

BANK, White Cube, NY, 1999, from The Bank Fax-Bak Service series (detail), ink on paper, 8.25 x 11.75 inches. Courtesy of BANK archive, London.

David Ording, After, 2005–2007 oil on canvas 7 x 10 feet. Courtesy of the artist and Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston.

David Ording, After (40 Plates from Degas), 2004, oil on canvas, 34 x 38 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston.

Gaylen Gerber with BANK, Andrea Fraser, David Ireland, Christian Jankowski, Louise Lawler, N55, David Ording and Red76, Backdrop/Exact Imagination, 2008,* latex on canvas, various media dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. *Gerber’s Backdrops are not dates themselves but carry the date of the artwork installed in relation to it.

Red76, Franklin’s VDC Copy Center, 2008, 1124 North High, Columbus, Ohio. Courtesy of the artists.

Red76, Franklin’s VDC Copy Center, 2008, 1124 North High, Columbus, Ohio. Courtesy of the artists.

Red76, Franklin’s VDC Copy Center, 2008, 1124 North High, Columbus, Ohio. Courtesy of the artists.

Exact Imagination, 2008, 60 pages, 8.25 x 5 inches.