The Art Committee's Assessment and General Intention

The Art Committee’s Assessment and Overall Concept

The Art Committee has defined the following overall objectives for the art projects for R6:

• The works of art will play a distinctive role within R6.
• The works of art will be of high, international quality.
• The work of art will be given space by virtue of its own intrinsic, expressive value.
• The selection of artists will reflect our current, global reality.

 

The works of art will play a distinctive role within R6

By “distinctive” we mean something that is clear, independent and has an impact.

The works of art will be of high, international quality

The realm of contemporary art is like all cultural fields in that it is not unitary and hierarchical, but fragmented, where different measures of quality can co-exist. In this regard, “high, international quality” may seem like a vague formulation. The Art Committee would, therefore, like to select artists from an open pre-qualification call on the basis of two criteria. Firstly, it is important that the artists problemtize and develop the aesthetic and political discourse or production of meaning they engage with in their practice. Basically, the artists need to balance aesthetic and ethical concerns in a precise and strong way, which we deem relevant for this context.

Secondly, we will be putting emphasis on the artists’ individual track records, particularly their inclusion in important exhibitions, projects and publications. The Art Committee has focused on important international exhibitions as well as on institutions that are seen as driving the discourse of artistic practice, rather than commercial galleries. Larger projects and publications can also be indicative of the artist’s ability to handle large-scale budgets and production units, as well as their capacity to develop and deliver the project.

The work of art will be given space in by virtue of its own intrinsic, expressive value.

Over the last 50 years, the debates around public art have been characterised by the opposition between art as an autonomous work more or less independent of its context and art that is subsumed by or compliments its context. In a somewhat simplistic way one could see this as a perpetuation of the binary between the modernist concept of the autonomous work of art and the arts and crafts idea of applied art. In the wake of this discourse, a new one developed, related to the notion of site-specificity, in other words, the way in which a work of art functions in relation to its location. Should a work of art fulfil certain requirements associated with a particular place or should it critically relate to this site and its needs? The notion of the neutral or autonomous work of art has also been re-evaluated in a highly critical way. 

By stating “the work of art will be given space in by virtue of its own intrinsic, expressive value” the Art Committee wishes to emphasize the intrinsic value of art. This does not mean that we believe in art that does not reflect its context, but that the value of art resides in the work’s intrinsic intelligence and sensitivity, as well as in its relationship to the viewer and the context, rather than in its capacity to activate a dead public space or offer some practical function. In relation to R6, the Art Committee is looking for works of art that invoke and develop the physical, political and historical aspects of the context on its own, aesthetic terms. This could take the form of works that question notions of power, democracy or political history.

In this way, one could imagine the work of art as a voice in the public space. That is why the Art Committee have invoked the term “expression”. Art often expresses its own time and place from its own specific point of view, which emerges in the intersection between a context and its multifaceted nature.

The selection of artists will reflect our current, global reality.

The most important element for the Art Committee has been the context that the works will become part of. The Norwegian government is the country’s leading arbiter of power. The policies that the Government employs are continuously influenced by global decision-making processes, developments in the world economy, international conventions and supra-national entities. The Art Committee wants to manifest this global orientation through the commissioned art projects. In the earlier stages of building the Government Building Complex, the art commissions were carried out by Norwegian artists and functioned partly as a profiling of Norwegian democracy and its art and culture. The Art Committee does not see such artistic strategies as very relevant any longer, and finds it more useful to see Norway as “a small country in the world”.

One consequence of this approach was to only invite international artists to the prestigious outdoor commission. It was important for the Art Committee to select an artist from outside Europe and the United States to underline the fact that the representation of these artists and their right to expression is a requirement in Norwegian public life. The winner of this closed competetion was Do Ho Suh from South Korea/USA. His project is situated on the outer parts of the paved square. A number of small (10-13 cm) human figures in green-patinated bronze will be placed between the paving stones to elude to grass sprouting up from the ground. In some places, the figures lift up the paving stones and seem to hold them up or dispel them completely. Seen from above, the little figures create a green geometric pattern spilling across parts of the square. Do Ho Suh has also included a tree that underlines the location of the work of art and generates a unifying effect vis-à-vis the surrounding space.

Grass Roots Square addresses the issue of people versus power. The representation of the grass roots is ambiguous: it invokes an enduring order as well as being something that pushes itself into view, spreading across the ground as a force of change. The project involves the unique characterisation of each figure, and they are different in terms of gender, age and ethnicity. In this way, individuality is ensured, while the work also creates a strong image of unity across the mass of figures.

Grass Roots Square is an important signifier that is also able to politicize the works of art inside the building. Their ability to relate to the outdoor project will, therefore, be an important element in the selection of the indoor projects. The Art Committee members have agreed on a broad strategy for the indoor art projects and will be inviting both Norwegian and international artists, as long as their projects resonate with the aim of invoking or in some way relating to the global political challenges currently facing the Norwegian political power apparatus.





Do Ho Suh: Grass Roots Square, sketches 2009.