1. A Brief Overview of Installation
Art
Daniela Casalino

2. A Definition
- Creating an environment
- Viewing becomes an
experience, participation
- Arranged on location
- Commemorated through
documentation
- Evoke emotions,
associations, thoughts,
longings, moods

3. Background – Where did it
begin?
- 1970s
- Marcel Duchamp, ready-mades
- Gutai Group - 1954
- Social activism
- Pieces become an experience to
express a message
- Constantly questioning
boundaries of art, affect on
society

4. Water, Gutai
Group, 1956/2011

5. Three Important Figures
Kara Walker
Judy Pfaff
Félix Gonzáles – Torres

6. Kara Walker
- 1969 – present
- Silhourettes, storytelling
- Race, gender, sexuality, violence, identity
- Historical realism, fantastical

7. - Presents themes as an absurd theatre
- Romanticizing the antebellum south
- Inspired by Gone with the Wind
- “Silhouette leads to avoidance of the subject. You can’t look at them
directly.”
Rise Up Ye Mighty Race! 2013

8. - Moved from California to
Georgia
- Stone Mountain
- Meaning of “black” and “white”
America
- Exchanges of power
- Inspired by historical painting
- Freeze frame, characters on
a stage
- Near life sized silhouettes
Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet
we Pressed On), 2000
Insurrection!
- slave revolt
- Pre – Civil War
- Destroying the master
- Overhead projector engages viewers
- Skirting the line between fiction and
reality

9. - Cyclorama
- Surrounds viewer, forces them to take park in the
experience
- Narrative
The Means to an End: A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.
1995

10. Judy Pfaff
- 1946 – present
- Pioneer of installation art
- Mixed media, colorful, physical
- “Collagist in space”

11. - Anticipation, surprise
- Exuberant, sprawling installations
- Weaving landscape, architecture,
color
- Creates based on personal
emotions of the moment
cirque, CIRQUE, 1993. Steel, aluminum,
stainless steel cable, blown glass, automotive
laquer paints

12. Buckets of Rain, 2006. Made with wood, steel, wax,
plaster, fluorescent light, paints, black foil, expanding
foam
- About labor invested in installations
- Abstractionist, high precision and spontenaity

13. Neither Here Nor There, 2003. Made with mechanical tubing, wood, rigid
foam, paint, tape
- On Neither Here Nor There: “She seems to get order and
disorder working for her at the same time. It’s a very
contemporary quality, given our lives today.” – New York
Times
- Intentional “randomness”

14. Félix Gonzáles – Torres
- 1957 – 1996
- American, Cuban-born, raised in Puerto
Rico
- Gay
- 1979 – moves to NYC
- 1980 – participates in the Whitney
Independent Study program, influenced by
critical theory
- Critical theory – philosophical approach to
culture, confronts social, historical,
ideological forces at work

15. Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star, 1993
- quiet, minimalistic installations
- Used ready-mades like clocks, lights, stacks of paper, packaged
candies
- Reflection of experience with AIDS
- 1987 – joined Group Material

16. “Untitled”, 1991. Made with offset printer
paper
- Majority of works are entitled “Untitled”
- Works undergo process: lights flicker out, candy is dispersed, paper
shifted
- Everything is art and everything is temporary
- Confronting elitism in artistic community
“Untitled” (Revenge), 1991. Made with light blue
candies wrapped in cellophane

17. “Untitled”, 1991
- Billboard installation
- 24 locations in NYC
- After death of long-time
partner from AIDS

18. How does installation art connect to
the past and other cultures?
- Renaissance
- Artistic obsession with creating virtual realities
- End of 19th century question tradition and rules
- Impressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, etc
- Gutai Group, 1950s Japan
- Connects to socio-political groups to make a
statement

19. Berlin Wall – Asisi Panorama
- View from West to East Berlin
- Reminder of past
- Near Checkpoint Charlie
Yadegar Asisi, The Berlin Wall, 2012

20. Connecting: Now and Then
Delacroix, Liberty Leading the
People, 1830
Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We
Pressed On), 2000

21. - Romanticism (1800s)
- Repressed subjects,
cry for change
- Epic
- Rich color palate
- Little room for
interpretation

22. - Installation (1970s – present)
- Fairy tale narrative
- Nostalgic and critical
- Exaggerated silhouettes, unrealistic representation

23. Both romanticize brutality
Differing degrees of subtlety, call for change