Artists speak: Fred Wilson.

Born 1954, the Bronx, NY

Education BFA, SUNY/Purchase

Lives and Works New York, NY

Media & Materials Installation, printmaking, sculpture; found objects, glass

Biography

Fred Wilson's artistic practice spans a wide range of materials, methods, and sites. Known for his work creating new exhibition contexts for the display of art and artifacts found in museum collections, Wilson's installations encompass everything from wall labels, sound, and lighting, to nontraditional pairings of objects. His installations lead viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. While appropriating curatorial methods and strategies, Wilson questions--and forces the viewer to question--how curators shape interpretations of historical truth, artistic value, the language of display, and what kinds of biases our cultural institutions express. More recently, Wilson has created a series of prints and works in glass.

"I would like to think that objects have memories--or that they're imbued with memory. A lot of what I do is capturing memory or eliciting memory from an object. I'm interested in the world of images and objects where people seem to forget about memory, forget these things have a past or multiple pasts. I think the more you know, the more you understand about something. It doesn't mean you ordinarily just don't have any new thoughts about it, but if you see something and you believe that what you think about it is all there is to know, there's something involved with the ego there. The more you know, the more you have in the world to work with. And I try to elicit those memories so that people are not walking around blinded by their environment. I look at things and wonder what they are and why they are. I see things and wonder why people are not wondering about them. Everything interests me: a gum wrapper could interest me as much as something at the Metropolitan Museum.

"I wanted to use black glass because it looks like a liquid. It represents ink, oil, tar, and a lot of the titles in this series refer to what liquid does. I hope some of these images come through for people because that's how I'm thinking about them. Some have cartoony eyes that bring it back to the social and historical, relating to my own experiences as a child. For me, because of 1930s cartoons that were recycled in my childhood in the 1960s, these cartoon eyes on a black object represent African-Americans in a very derogatory way. Any material that was black could be made into something that represents an African-American. That, to me, is an extremely sad commentary. So I sort of view them as black tears. If I was to boil it down to a couple of words, also thinking about the disintegration of the body to an essence of just color--which really has no bearing on race or culture or anything--it's just how America thought of African-Americans.

"I use topics like history and intellectual and cultural things in my work. But it all comes from this deep sadness inside of me that's kind of the baseline. I'm not a sad person but it bubbles up. If you look at the work in a total sense, it's not everything that's just making you cry. That's not how I go through the world but I think--if your work represents you--some of that's going to come through."

Activity Suggestions:

Select five to ten objects that represent your identity. Imagine that you are an archaeologist who has just unearthed these objects. Create a display that includes interpretive labels, illustrations, and related historical information.

Imagine a conversation between two or more disparate or unrelated artifacts from a local museum or daily life. Illustrate this exchange using text and images combined in two or three dimensions.

art:21

ART IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Art21, Inc. is a nonprofit contemporary art organization serving students, teachers, and the general public. Art21 produces the Emmy-nominated, nationally broadcast PBS series Art.21--Art in the Twenty-First Century, a wide range of education materials, and outreach programs. This multi-faceted project introduces audiences to a diverse range of contemporary visual artists working in the United States today and to the art they are producing now.

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