Overtime: The Art of Work

Overtime: The Art of Work ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY BUFFALO MARCH 8-MAY 17, 2015 "Work is ... that incredibly rare subject with universal recognition, if not appeal." --Cathleen Chaffee (1) Overtime: The Art of Work, a recent exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, explored the representation of workers and labor conditions from the late eighteenth century into the early twenty-first century. Much cannier than a survey, curator Cathleen Chaffee's exhibition Integrated contemporary modes of video and installation with more traditional representational strategies. The exhibition Invited viewers to consider the ways in which artists have engaged and addressed "the labor of others" by gathering a range of images of workers and displaying them in groupings that illustrate both breadth and similarity across time and "prompt connections between very different art and artists." (2) Chaffee arranged to have free admission every Sunday for the length of the exhibition "in honor of the hardworking people" of Western New York. This generosity was in evidence throughout the exhibition: in the space given to each artwork, in the absence of lengthy wall text, and In the two free "handouts" that accompanied the show--Chaffee's newsprint guide and Fred Lonidier's poster. Approaching the second floor entrance to the exhibition, I was intrigued by the sound of a mechanized rhythm that wafted down the stairs. It was clear that something was "at work" upstairs. The regularity of the sound echoed the Sol LeWitt drawing that adorns the walls of the staircase as part of the permanent collection (Wall Drawing #1268: Scribbles: Staircase (AKAG) [conceived 2006; executed 2010]). Arriving at the top of the stairs, I found that the thousands of hand-drawn lines made by a crew of sixteen artists for LeWitt were reflected in Agnieszka Kurant's Untitled (2014)--a sculptural piece composed of a moving life-size conveyor belt that emerges from a large mirrored box, creating an infinite loop untouched by human hands. A bold introduction, the piece stood on the edge of the exhibition, serving as a preface, inviting the viewer into a space for the contemplation of work as "a subject that is also a structure," to use Chaffee's words from her catalog essay. (3) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Kurant's Untitled also activated a series of questions: Where are the workers? Where have the workers gone? Have machines and automation replaced them? Chaffee's answer is No--workers have been spread out all over the globe. In contrast to this staging of the spectral absence of workers, the rest of the exhibition presented a surfeit of images of workers, from Germany to China, from New York City to Japan. In the newsprint exhibition guide that was offered free to visitors, Chaffee suggested that Kurant's piece engages and implicates viewers by allowing us to see ourselves participating in the scene of continuous production and circulation that the sculpture emulates. On my visits, I watched as most museumgoers studiously avoided being caught and reflected by the mirrors of the piece. But this opening nevertheless worked to draw visitors into a dynamic structure of observation and reflection. Throughout the rest of the exhibition, we "saw" workers--embodied, abstracted, photographed, filmed, painted, and drawn. The museum became a place of critical encounter with images of workers in motion and standing still, observed, interrupted, and interviewed. For a compact show--one large room and four offshoots with overflow into the great hall space and the stairwell--there were a surprising number of artists (thirty in total). The works ran the gamut from institutional critique, video installation, the documentation of performance (Tehching Hsieh's One Year Performance 1980-1981), and an early example of "social practice" (Mierle Laderman Ukeles's Touch Sanitation from 1977-80), to painting (Berthe Morisot's Femme Cousant [Woman Sewing] from c. …