Mikhail Porollo “Humour and Institutional Critique”
Text by Artis Trops
The exhibition of the students of LUCA, School of Arts in Brussels created different perspective on looking on art that portrays humour. The goal of the assignment that invites students to create the works that ‘takes them to the places they’ve never been’ at the first sight can be quite hard to achieve, moreover to create the idea that could be in some way coherent with the humour. But at the same time, opportunities and ways of realizing it are unlimited and allow imagination to fly.
Especially attractive was work of Mikhail Porollo, who used photography as a medium to address his approach to this topic. Ambiguous subject portrayed in the photographs and additional text that contributed to express his message raised the thought about some influence of the institutional critique for carrying out his idea.
Mikhail Porollo
The phrases that Mikhail uses to characterize his work are clearly linked with the ideas of the institutional critique which developed in the 1960s. “’Institutional Critique’ is an artistic practice that reflects critically on its own place within galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself” (Alberro, 2011). Moreover, institutional critique can be seen as artist’s self-reflectory tool to express his position about political and social discourses that are surrounding the role of the artist as a mediator between object of art and its place in structured and defined art-spaces. “From the 1980s, the institutional framework became somewhat expended to include the artist’s role (the subject performing critique) as institutionalized, as well as an investigation into other institutional spaces (and practices) besides the art space” (Sheikh, 2015). Therefore, Mikhail’s work can be seen as silent but direct positioning towards questioning art-object’s place in the institutional structure.
“The art institutions were often perceived as a place of ‘cultural confinement’ and thus something to attack aesthetically, politically and theoretically” (TATE Museum Glossary, Institutional Critique). In the photography above you can see the constant need of (re-)creation and the criticism towards institutionalism, which is self-reflective discussion about – what is art and where the limits of the art and role of the artist ends.
“Institutional critiques are interested in how representation itself is a political act. How the production of images is itself the encapsulation of value systems and invisible networks” (Haacke, 2015). Mikhail’s work can be identified as a quiet laughter about the constant ‘greediness’ of the art world, without not knowing its limits and regenerating its own values in its representations.
“Art is about dematerialization of the object of art. The ‘work’ lay in idea” (Haacke, 2015). Mikhail’s response to this not defined, but always existing requirements that art-spaces desire to fulfil in their functionality, is in some way ridicule of the object itself. The form and execution of the work accomplish all the necessary requirements that institution require, but at the same time it collapses under the laughter of the requirements, artist’s role and representation of the object as a direct answer – here’s what you asked me to make. By becoming a subject as a part of his work, Mikhail creates ‘artist-subject’ category, which highlights the role of the artist as a direct link with its object. Action portrayed in his work gives a slight humorous aspect that questions the boundaries of the definition of ‘art’. The same as Duchamp, Mikhail questions the restraint of the object that he presents and its place into the institutional structure. In some way Institutional Critique can be seen as triggered by Duchamp and his introduction of ready-made art into the institutional and strictly regulated environment of the art-world. By this, Duchamp’s works were putting the object in different perspective and adding a new aesthetical and ideological value to it, “the valorisation of the object, the extraction from context and function, the preservation from the decay and the dissemination of it abstract meaning” (Benjamin, 1983).
Titles are crucial elements of satirical art, where the language is the main tool to provoke and in some sense maybe confuse the main idea of the object. In the similar way as Mikhail uses language and photography as a medium to satirize the object, also Andrea Fraser (one of the leading contemporary ‘institutional critics’) uses language as a tool to question the directed and sterile environment in which art-spaces operates. In her work ‘Welcome to the Wadsworth: a Museum Tour’ (1991), she’s acting a guide giving a tour not through the galleries but outside in the area and develops discussion about economic and political topics that are linked with art institutions. Also in her work ‘Little Frank and His Carp’ (2001) Fraser develops story around the information that audio-guide is giving and reflects to it by showing her emotional changes that are triggered by the information that the audio-guide is telling her. “Her performance in Little Frank and His Carp and the surreptitious recording of it might be seen as attempt to transgress the ‘image control’ imposed by the institution” (Martin, 2014).
‘Go to the places you’ve never been’ in Mikhail’s execution is quite humorous in its ambiguity and over-exaggerating emphasis of the role of the artist in making art, and paradoxically, this in some sense post ‘ready-made’ critique that claims that everything can be art, and that artist is the centre of creating it, still finds the place in the exhibition halls.
References
- Alberro, Alexander; Stimson Blake. Institutional Critique. An Anthology of Artist’s Writings. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2011.
- Benjamin, Buchloh. The Museum Fictions of Marcel Broodthaers. Toronto: Art Metropolr, 1983.
- Haacke, Hans. Institutional Critique. http://ewaneumann.com/websites/haacke/institutional_critique.html, published: 2012, last accessed: 02.04.2015.
- Institutional Critique. Glossary of Art Terms, TATE Museum. Glossary I: Institutional Critique. http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/institutional-critique. Last accessed: 03.04.2015.
- Sheikh, Simon. Notes on Institutional Critique. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies: http://eipcp.net/transversal/0106/sheikh/en, published: January 2001. Last accessed: 03.04.2015.
- Duhrkoop, Ash. Outside the White Cube: Conserving Institutional Critique. Interventionsjournal, issue 1, vol. 4: http://interventionsjournal.net/2015/01/21/outside-the-white-cube-conserving-institutional-critique/. Published: January 2015. Last accessed: 17.04.2015.
- Martin, Richard. Summary. Little Frank and his Carp (2001). TATE Museum, 2014: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/fraser-little-frank-and-his-carp-t12324/text-summary. Last accessed: 15.04.2015.
photography performing humour 