Kai Althoff: and then leave me to the common swifts

KAI ALTHOFF: AND THEN LEAVE ME TO THE COMMON SWIFTS

Photo: Kai Althoff
Museum Exhibits
Sep 18, 2016 to Jan 22, 2016
Official Site

Kai Althoff: and then leave me to the common swifts, on view at The Museum of Modern Art was designed and curated by Kai Althoff and organized at The Museum of Modern Art by Laura Hoptman, Curator, and Margaret Ewing, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture. On the occasion of this unique exhibition, the artist provides the following statement:

The Museum of Modern Art granted me all freedom in using the gallery’s space and the Museum’s profound resources to present my work in the manner that I deem appropriate at this time of its existence and my life. I am very thankful for this, for even if I strain and press myself to come to a conclusion regarding the past, a lot of the things—and many call this work—I made up until today, I cannot defend or think of it as something people need to see or bother with. These were often just done for myself in the very first place.

Yet to leave it to others to put them in order and arrange them for display and consumption as a somewhat logical consequence deriving from this lack of my own ability to analyze and emotionally realize their gravity feels impossible and wrong; I am still alive, and this is an institution with a history that one cannot forego naïvely, though it may mean nothing much to me. Thus I feel I have to just show it in the manner that my mere self tells me to now. I have to look at things I have fabricated earlier in life, and I will give in to my immediate reaction emotionally and handle them accordingly, when deciding what to do with them now. This is why my gratitude for the above mentioned freedom from the institution is so huge.

Mind you, this is not all my pure will, but comes from the task of putting together a show, which I was asked to do, despite my confidence terrifyingly wobbling. And that it is for the right reasons, it being so wobbly, because of how wrong one can be in reality, when one thinks one does something significantly grand with the mind, heart and hands. But in the moment of making, the object you muster gains power over you and sometimes indeed this power may stem from the highest entity, from all that is beyond words and for a human to grapple. This I believe must have a reason, which in itself is more beautiful than a failed result, or a mediocre result. This happens in everybody’s life. There is no reason really why my things are exhibited in a museum and others’ are not.


Author: MoMA

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