April 20-28, 2018
Opening preview: Fri April 20, 11am-6pm
Opening reception: Sat April 21, 6-8pm
White Box
The territory of the square meter fights back!
Fred Forest exhibits the Pompidou Center Paris in New York.
Public panel/debate with Fred Forest and Michael Leruth: Tuesday April 24
There has never been anything like this before in the history of art: an artist responds in kind with an exhibition focusing on the very institution that had invited him to hold a
retrospective of his work just a few months earlier. Gratitude on the part an artist who breaks all of the usual rules … in this case, the “rule” that the power to invite and exhibit is always the prerogative of the institution. Indeed, the institution always has sole authority in the choice of artists and guest curators, as well as regarding the rules that they must follow. But no good deed is left unpunished … and it is now Fred Forest’s turn to “exhibit” the Centre Pompidou … in New York! He will treat it as an everyday material object or, better yet, as a work of art in its own right as part of his ongoing work of institutional and political critique. Not wanting to be outdone by the unstinting kindness lavished on him by the Director of the National Museum of Modern Art and its young curator throughout the preparation of his retrospective, Forest wishes to thank them very warmly for the eagerness with which they were committed to granting his every wish. Except, of course, for a few minor omissions and shortcomings, a non-exhaustive list of which appears on the exhibition website. Allow us mention just one of these little shortcomings here: the unjust discrimination to which Forest continues to be subjected on the part of Centre Pompidou after so many years of amicable companionship (in particular ever since a certain trial to which he rather recklessly subjected this venerable institution for lack of transparency) … discrimination in comparison to other contemporary artists of the more polite and domesticated kind that you wouldn’t mind inviting home for dinner.
Granted, it is probably true that Forest threw himself against the august Centre Pompidou in a moment of pure madness——a fatal bout of temporary insanity for which the vindictive sons and grandsons of this establishment have made him pay dearly for many years. Fortunately, the inner strength of Territory of the Square Meter has already succeeded in bringing the worm into the fruit this summer. The Force that is the ultimate guarantor of justice shall not fail to return to him yet again when the present and future upheavals that he is now preparing come to pass. No rebel can succeed in an epic struggle against the “Empire” without the help of the Force. May the Force be with the Territory!
This exhibition will be accompanied by various documents and videos reflecting Forest’s artistic, communicational, critical, political, and sociological practice as carried out in France, Brazil, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany and New York since the 1960s.
– Michael F. Leruth, Author of Fred Forest’s Utopia: Media Art and Activism (Leonardo Books – MIT Press, 2017)
