Mixed media Installation, installation view Kunstmuseum Basel
Photo by Gina Folly Courtesy Kunstmuseum Basel
Installations
Mixed media installation, installation view at MAK Vienna
Mixed media installation, photography
Mechanical Bull is conceived of as a cognitive exercise – a category of recent sculptural works by Clegg & Guttmann which require the audience to interact with a system of objects according to the instructions that define the work – actions that help the viewers focus on aspects of their cognitive system and to understand how they condition the mind to experience the world in particular ways. Apart from their intellectual import, these works intend to heighten the bodily consciousness of our cognitive condition and, thus, generate a total experience with intellectual, emotive, and corporeal components. Mechanical Bull is concerned with the concept of beat as investigated from a cognitive standpoint – that is, as a mental projection of order on a series of audio signals that assigns them an 'inductive drive.' More specifically, the work centers on syncopation – the beat created by slight, deliberate deviations from a rhythm pattern which strengthen the beat drive rather than undermining it. In this case, the cognitive exercise here takes on the form of a syncopated dance; the audience is instructed to syncopate the rhythm of their bodies to the sounds of the mechanical bull – sounds which have been captured by microphones placed in the springs and amplified by equipment in the 'chandelier’ – alternately obeying and playing off-beat. As they syncopate together to the same beat pattern, the participants become correlated with one another as well as the source even if moving in his or her own way. Indeed, this 'group projection' of syncopated patterns reconciles individuality with collective action and potentially transforms the object that triggers it into a fetish or idol, or both.
Mixed media installation, installation view Galleria Lia Rumma, Milan
Mixed media installation
Mixed media installation, installation view: Vienna Secession
Mixed media installation, installation view: Kunstverein Braunschweig
Clegg & Guttmann
Michael Clegg and Yair Martin Guttmann were born in 1957 in Dublin and Jerusalem. They went to New York where they met at the School of Visual Arts in the class of Joseph Kosuth and have been working as an artist duo since 1980. In their photographs, installations, material collections, interviews and videos they explore and reinvent the genre of portraiture. They develop models for communication and collaboration that include and redefine the participation of the viewer. In 2022 Clegg & Guttmann were awarded the Max Hermann Prize for their public library project. Throughout the years they had solo exhibitions at Konschthal Esch (2022), Kunstmuseum Basel (2018), Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna (2016), Kunstverein Salzburg (2011) MUMOK, Vienna (2010) among others. Their work has been shown in group exhibitions in at institutions such as Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2018), Kunstmuseum Basel (2018), Kunsthalle Wien (2017), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015) and The Metropolitan Museum, New York City (2014).
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- Estate of León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Estate of Barbara Hammer
- The Cabinet of Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Tina Schulz
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony