A Logo for America (1987) by Alfredo Jaar. Photo / Courtesy of Galerie Lelong and the artist
A Logo for America (1987) by Alfredo Jaar. Photo / Courtesy of Galerie Lelong and the artist
Fifteen seconds: according to a number of surveys, that's the amount of time the "average" viewer spends looking at a painting and accompanying text.
But if you want to truly appreciate the work of Alfredo Jaar - Chilean artist, architect and film-maker - you must invest a good deal more time and not just at an exhibition itself. Jaar's works are haunting and confrontational and will continue to run through your mind long after you see them.
While he may not be well known in New Zealand, Jaar is internationally regarded as one of the most "uncompromising, compelling and innovative artists" working today, producing art (usually installations and photography), which is strongly political and offers an alternative assessment of real-life socio-political events.
He has created more than 70 public "interventions" around the world; more than 60 monographic publications have been produced about his work and Jaar has accumulated numerous fellowships and awards while international museums, galleries and private collectors have been busily adding his work to their collections.
Now Jaar is in the country, with work in two exhibitions: Auckland Art Gallery's Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America features arguably his most famous, the video intervention A Logo for America (1987) in which he "famously reminded North Americans that their borders do not constitute 'America'" and a solo show,
(1987) print as well as work from the 1990s referencing the West's prolonged apathetic response to Africa generally and specifically to the atrocities of the Rwandan massacre; a 2011 work using the infamous image of America's war-room oversight of the killing of Osama Bin Laden; and another recent text-based work on the making of images.
Both are firsts: Space to Dream is the first comprehensive exhibition of work from South America in an Australasian gallery; his solo show, the first in a private gallery in Australasia. Why does he think it has taken so long for our side of the Pacific to become interested not just in his work, but also by South American art in general?
"Obviously, the physical distance is probably the main reason but there's also the language. We are not so good at English; you don't speak our languages and that contributes to the barrier ..." He says we are living in an increasingly globalised world so distance has been shortened, and the internet is partly responsible for that, but perhaps that will change because there is is a kind of fatigue with the culture of
the so-called First World countries. People have the impression that everything has been done and seen so they are looking to new cultures and places that have not been explored so much, like Latin America, for the fresh and the new."
Jaar was born in Chile in 1956 but left for New York in 1981 and has been based there ever since. He says he didn't have to flee the Pinochet regime, but chose to leave because he felt he was being culturally and creatively suffocated.
"I identify as an artist who was born in Chile, but I have been living in New York for 33 years," he says. "You can have an origin, but we are the result of all the stimuli we receive and my work is a result of that."
Jaar incorporates his architectural practice to create interventions specific to each physical location and says he wants them to be like poetry. "I don't want it to be didactic; like poetry it needs to be sweet and to try to strike a balance. Like any other artist working in a different culture, I am an outsider and the work does not speak for anyone but myself. Being an outsider can have certain advantages, but it can also have disadvantages. The advantages? Sometimes people tend not to see the obvious around them and can't express certain things because they are too much a part of it."
On Tuesday, Jaar gives the Space to Dream keynote lecture, where he will introduce his most recent projects including work produced in places as diverse as Fukushima, Leipzig, Santiago and New York. He will also present a selection of his most iconic work.
