Sam Durant James Stanfield

Several of my friends asked what I thought of the Sam Durant exhibition at Paula Cooper.

The main showroom spaces are filled with gray – Bondo colored – renditions of obelisk shaped monuments. The press release can give you the skinny on the conceptual project behind it all. My politics are so aligned with the thrust of this project that I don’t feel any shock or estrangement from the facts that Durant asks me to focus on. (In fact, the only persons that could be challenged by his trajectory are either deplorably undereducated or Republican.)

My criticism is that Durant takes no real chances. This cleaned-up, research-enriched, gallery-ready, conceptual project method of building an art experience is so acceptable that I can’t find the excitement. The method has become prosaic. It’s unfortunate that a project intent on exposing the glorification of homegrown genocide is stifled by such a Phaidon book version of 80’s and 90’s era post-conceptual practice.

On the up side, the mental gesture involving the transfer of these monuments to Washington, D.C. is amusing. What if he could cause that controversy – force the majority to face facts?