Being smart in this time of historical limitation has become a new value, a new way of doing things. The threshold of something else, something different. The search for difference emerges in a combat that sometimes seems lost beforehand. Changing the rules of the art game is difficult. Often it consists of changing the exhibition format, inventing strategies to make a meeting of works become a piece of reality, even if it is virtual at the moment. It is put into practice by the Hauser & Wirth gallery at its expected headquarters on the Illa del Rei, next to the port of Mahón, in Menorca.
The idea was to open this year but, given the situation, things are postponed until 2021. The physical space is not finished. The remodeling works are ongoing, fighting between permits and stops. What we see in Hauser & Wirth Virtual Reality is a 3D recreation of this space as if it were finished, a tool that many of the global galleries like this one, with locations in London, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Gstaad, Saint Moritz and Somerset, use for their artists to visualize the spaces where they will later present their exhibitions. Thus, they avoid travel and accommodation, carbon and money. A traffic that in times of confinement has accelerated the pulse of your ArtLab project: virtual exhibitions that can be viewed from the gallery's website, through a computer, smartphone or using a virtual reality device such as Google Cardboard.
This first online exhibition brings together works by some of Hauser & Wirth's key artists, from Louise Bourgeois' Le coeur est là to Mark Bradford's New York City , pulling Lawrence Weiner for the title: Beside Itself . That out of itself could not be more eloquent. I assure you that the 3D experience comes here to surprising realism. The architecture, the sun, the shadows, the flowers, the trees ... The space is impressive: 1,500 meters between the area dedicated to exhibitions, gardens, shops, canteens, classrooms for education ... Although the experience is similar to when we go to a theater rehearsal. As if we sneaked in the day before the premiere. The work is there, but the emotion of the meeting is missing. The same happens with the online exposure that two of its artists, George Condo and Rashid Johnson, have made for the Hauser & Wirth website. It works halfway. The anxiety is seen, but it is barely palpable. Let's start from a positive handicap: web art is, in itself, a way of socializing. Exploring that potential is one of the biggest challenges for contemporary art. More than sharing a specific space, reaching the limits of artistic practice, if there are any, and suggesting alterations, novelties, exits and variations to the exhibition format. That is good, but how do you fine-tune and agree all the dissonances?
I find an answer in Peter Handke's The Story of a Pencil . The writer imagines an epic composed of something similar to haikus that, however, cannot be recognized as individual pieces: without plot, without intrigue, without drama and that, nevertheless, are narrative. Like when a dream is given rhythm with rationality: you can only fail. That is what Max Ernst said to Werner Spies on the occasion of the art retrospective given in 1967. And some of that contradiction is also here. In any virtual exhibition realities intersect and times are confused creating a magical and playful dimension that exalts a singular experience, but where the loss of individual capacity to create and preserve an imaginary world of its own also appears. It is like fairy tales: an intensification of reality. History without its chronological parsimony.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth, the managers of Hauser & Wirth, are, without a doubt, cunning. An empire as prestigious as yours is not built without good ideas and intelligence. In the face of confusion and delays, they do not let their guard down. Your first virtual sample works well as a first glance, although without a doubt the best thing about this project will be to see it in situ . A gallery in the middle of an islet is well worth a visit. Maybe the gallery of the future is just that: a networked island, although what we see at the moment works like a photograph of WG Sebald in the flap of his books: as if waiting for the opportunity to say something. You know: the goalkeeper's position. Small steps forward and backward. Maybe some isolated word behind the net.