Office Space

Dear John

 

December 28, 2020 - February 28, 2021

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Office Space is proud to present Dear John, the Office Space Collective’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery. This show presents an incisive sound piece with a conceptual work on paper which acts as an interview portrait of the late artist John Baldessari.

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In October 2009, Jennifer Higgie from Frieze magazine asked readers to submit a question via e-mail for an October 15, 2009 2:30 PM interview between curator Matthew Higgs and Baldessari (https://www.frieze.com/article/you-ask-questions) for Frieze Talks 2009. Conceptual artist qi peng of the collective submitted his question as an intervention to conduct an interview portrait of Baldessari. His question was “Do you have any favorite cuisine or dishes that you enjoy?” Eventually the interview between Higgs and Baldessari was recorded and released to the public via internet. peng downloaded the sound file and edited it for his submitted question. After sampling the relevant section, he transcribed the interview portrait in the form of the dialogue between Higgs and Baldessari and created a computer text drawing for display at the gallery.

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After nearly twelve years and long after peng’s death, the Office Space Collective will be presenting this unrealized project within the domain of a formal gallery space. The curator documented the temporary installation and posted the sound file onto the gallery website itself along with the accompanying drawing. peng’s concept of the interview portrait behaves as a form of institutional critique while maintaining an exposure of the human side of a legendary artist.

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The mythology of Baldessari becomes punctured by his unwitting participation within a secret intervention by another conceptual artist. The idea of play becomes integral to showing the thin line between the public and private lives of artists.

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The Office Space Collective consists of Patrick Winfield Vogel, Albert Abdul-Barr Wang, Melissa Prosser, qi peng, and other artists as a conceptual artist group. Their projects represent the realizations of an unstable and rotating forward-thinking posse focused on various site-specific projects for the gallery itself. The collective exists in multiple locations across the world.