FRED WILSON, Conceptual Artist, Part II

"Untitled"
2005
1 table with 47 milk glass elements, 1 plaster bust, 1 plaster head, 1 standing woman and a ceramic cookie jar, 77 3/4 x 92 x 43 7/8 inches
Photo by Kerry Ryan McFate
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"I thought maybe I’ll make one big table piece using all of the collectibles and get them all out of my life at the same time...make a table piece that’s basically about the United States as a whole and use popular culture tchotchkes from around the United States. They’d all be talking to each other, all having these interactions...I decided to intersperse it with milk glass...there's something about this stuff. I also envision having a larger figure here and there, overlooking the whole scenario."
- Fred Wilson

"Chandelier Mori, (Speak of Me as I Am)"
2003
United States Pavilion
50th Venice Biennale: Dreams and Conflicts
Photo by R. Ransick/A. Cocchi
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"I had a Venetian glass fabricator create a huge seventeenth-century Venetian glass chandelier that would normally be in pastel colors or white. Whenever I use black it relates to some history of Africans in that particular place. It’s the idea of the color black as a metaphor, or as a representation of African-Americans. It’s the notion of black - blackness- and all its other meanings in relation to the history of race but also its meanings as just the color- or lack of color- or specific materials and their own histories, and trying to confuse that a bit."
- Fred Wilson

"Safe House II, (Speak of Me as I Am)"
2003
United States Pavilion
50th Venice Biennale: Dreams and Conflicts
Photo by R. Ransick/A. Cocchi
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"I did the pieces in my mind right after September 11th. And it really was about that experience and just much more, about emotions and feelings. So that room is a virtual space- a state of mind, a kind of futile, ridiculous thought, wanting the world to go back the way it was before September 11th. And the pot, with the little bed and all, that sits there in the space is called 'Safe House II.' It’s another emotional space. A place to be safe."
- Fred Wilson

"Turbulence II, (Speak of Me as I Am)"
2003
United States Pavilion
50th Venice Biennale: Dreams and Conflicts
Photo by R. Ransick/A. Cocchi
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"My work is essentially about where I am- and here I was, this African-American, doing a project in the American Pavilion about the Africans of Venice. The part that was the most abstract was this room that I created of black and white tile - thinking about issues of black and white. The room vibrated if you stood there and visually offset you a little bit because of that. I was also interested in institutional spaces - the kind of places that you’re familiar with but not necessarily comfortable in, like a bathroom in an airport, where you can be alone but where you’re not alone."
- Fred Wilson

"Drip Drop Plop"
2001
Glass, approximately 8 x 5 feet
Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York

"I wanted to use black glass because it looks like a liquid. It represents ink, oil, tar, and a lot of the titles in this series refer to what liquid does. I hope some of these images come through for people because that’s how I’m thinking about them. Some have cartoony eyes that bring it back to the social and historical, relating to my own experiences as a child. For me, because of 1930s cartoons that were recycled in my childhood in the 1960s, these cartoon eyes on a black object represent African-Americans in a very derogatory way. Any material that was black could be made into something that represents an African-American. That, to me, is an extremely sad commentary. So I sort of view them as black tears."
- Fred Wilson

"Untitled"
1996
Mixed media, 5 1/2 x 5 x 6 inches
Photo by Ellen Labenski
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"I made all these pieces where there are only two objects or three. I started making them because I really dislike them and I wanted to understand why I dislike them. But then people started sending me them because they saw I was making these pieces. And I had a whole lot leftover from my travels and collecting to make the works. But I don’t collect them because I like them."
- Fred Wilson

"By Degree"
1995
Ceramic and painted porcelain,
8 x 7 x 11 1/4 inches
Photo by Kerry Ryan McFate
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

"I think in the west, and particularly in America because it’s such a young country, you get the sense that so much comes into America and is re-fashioned and regurgitated without really understanding what it is. We’re such a young country, whereas in other countries they know about the history of the thing that they have and maybe that’s holding them back in some ways. So perhaps their problem is not knowing what they know. But in the United States there have been so many stereotypes about people, cultures, and ideas on very superficial levels that have been translated into the visual—black collectibles say, or graphic design, or even in architecture, or advertising. Those things they’ve hurt me in the past, because that’s how people see me before they even get to know me because of all this media material, TV and everything, you know, just very shallow understanding of a particular subject. That has prompted me to really want to know about things, to not take anything for granted, not to assume anything about anybody and try to tease out the various meanings. And then I can throw it away, but at least I know. "
- Fred Wilson

FRED WILSON
AT WORK ON A CONCEPTUAL ART DESIGN

Biography

Fred Wilson was born in the Bronx, New York in 1954, and lives and works in New York. He received a BFA from SUNY/Purchase. Commenting on his unorthodox artistic practice, Wilson has said that, although he studied art, he no longer has a strong desire to make things with his hands. “I get everything that satisfies my soul,” he says, “from bringing together objects that are in the world, manipulating them, working with spatial arrangements, and having things presented in the way I want to see them.” Thus, Wilson creates new exhibition contexts for the display of art and artifacts found in museum collections, along with wall labels, sound, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects. His installations lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. While appropriating curatorial methods and strategies, Wilson maintains his subjective view of the museum environment and the works he presents. He questions—and forces the viewer to question—how curators shape interpretations of historical truth, artistic value, and the language of display, and what kinds of biases our cultural institutions express. In his groundbreaking intervention, “Mining the Museum” (1992), Wilson transformed the Baltimore Historical Society’s collection to highlight the history of slavery in America. For the 2003 Venice Biennale, Wilson created a mixed-media installation of many parts, focusing on Africans in Venice and issues and representations of black and white, which included a suite of black glass sculptures; a black-and-white tiled room with wall graffiti culled from texts of African-American slave narratives; and a video installation of Othello screened backwards. Wilson received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award (1999) and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2003). He is the Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Object, Exhibition, and Knowledge at Skidmore College. Fred Wilson represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo (1992) and Venice Biennale.

ALL SOURCE MATERIALS FOR THIS BLOG ENTRY
from Art:21 / PBS.org

FRED WILSON, Conceptual Artist, Part I

This week I had a tremendous amount of pressure on me.

I work at Domingo Gonzalez Associates (DGA) in lower Manhattan which is an architectural lighting design firm. I am a senior drafter/junior lighting designer and my capacity there is as a CADD (Computer-Aided Drafting and Design) consultant.

I have been working on the $17 billion dollar 2nd Avenue Subway Line Project (and multi-billion dollar East Side Access Project) for sometime now, and this was the last push to get the 100% final design drawings out the door to New York City Transit (NYCT), the client. The train line would be called the "T" train. Kinda strange for native New Yorkers to have a new "T" train.

As a backdrop, the Second Avenue Subway will relieve pressure on the overcrowded Lexington Avenue line (#4 , 5 and 6 trains - or the "green lines" for those not familiar with New York City, LOL! ) and improve access to Lower Manhattan. The full length will run from 125th Street (Harlem) and Second Avenue to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan. Phase I, which will construct the 96th, 86th, and 72nd Street Stations and tie into the existing system at a new station at 63rd Street, is now underway.

So, the pressure was huge because the project is electronically drawn using the MicroStation application software which is a CADD program on the Windows operating system platform. I'm the only one who really knows how to use this program (though I've done some training with my co-workers here and there) and so the bulk of work falls on me.

So, I happen to get up from my computer workstation (taking a small break to revitalize) and walked into the conference room which was vacant at the time, and I saw all these INCREDIBLE 3D conceptual drawings on the walls of a project I was unfamiliar with. So I got closer and the main subject was a sculptured statue figure in which our firm was hired to properly light in this new public landmark space. The statue person looked African-American(!!!!!) to me which caught me by surprise as the totality of statues around the United States aren't of African descent for the most part.

So, now I'm really interested in this project my firm has taken on. And I wished this was something I could work on, but most of the firm projects including this one are electronically done in AutoCAD (another popular CADD program) to which I'm not proficient, and personally I don't like as a CADD program. So, I looked at the title-block (border) information and saw that this project is a public landmark space in Indianapolis and the person associated with it is Fred Wilson. Immediately, I thought to myself, who is Fred Wilson?

On the conference table was a very small scale and mini version of the sculptured statue from the drawings (appeared to by sculpted from concrete or some sculpting material, but honestly I'm not sure at all) which looked to weigh about 100 pounds, I guess. And what we do at the office sometimes is use a small scale of the actual subject and do test lighting phase options to see what the effect of the light will be with varying light fixtures projecting their light in strategic locations with the lights in the office on and off.

So after looking at the drawings and the AWESOME sculpture, I went back to my desk and immediately googled Fred Wilson and got a few hits and saw at a quick glance that he was an African-American artist of some kind. I composed an email and sent the link to myself as a reminder to do more research later. I mentioned the project to my boss, Domingo, and the senior partner and told them the project looked totally qool.

The next day I see the conference room being used, and it turns out that Fred Wilson is in the office discussing the project with my boss and the lighting designers involved with the project. While working, Domingo comes over to me after the formal meeting was finished and then introduced me to Fred Wilson. We all talked for about 10 minutes and I kept calling him "sir". I was certainly in awe of him which is why I was calling him "sir" because even though I didn't get a chance to do my research on him and knew nothing about him at all except that he was some kind of artist, it was a real pleasure to meet someone of African descent doing his thing and in the office conducting business to get his project to reality.

Though I do admit that standing there I was somewhat disconnected and had a dichotomy toward Fred Wilson because his visit to the office was so unexpected to me and because as aforementioned I didn't know who he was as an artist. In other words it would have been a qooler and more meaningful engagement for me had I known who he was beforehand and then meeting him. But hey, that's the hand I was dealt. And these things do inspire more deliberate domino effect pro-actions...

For example, I LOVED the film Devil In A Blue Dress (1995) starring Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle (one of my top favorite films of all-time) when I saw it theatrically. I had no idea that it was based upon the book by Walter Mosley, much less who Walter Mosley was as an author. So the movie ultimately inspired me to go out to the Barnes & Noble branch on 66th Street & Broadway to buy and read most of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mystery books.

So... saw the movie first then read the books afterward... met Fred Wilson first then did the research afterward.

Anyway, my boss told me that Fred Wilson is just this qool mellow person and someone you definitely wanted to get to know better as a person. The office meeting was productive and the project is moving ahead.

So, here we are in the present as I type this blog and did some research on Fred Wilson. See my blog entry FRED WILSON, Conceptual Artist, Part II...