I could do that.
That’s the first thing that went through my head when I saw a photograph of Matthew Deleget’s “Zero-Sum” installation at the
Whitney Biennial.
It looked like a glass-covered magazine display case.
Searching Deleget’s Web site brought up images like “Third World Democracy, 2014”—Enamel spray paint on wooden panels hit with
a hammer. Exhibits at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Bass Museum of Art, and Indianapolis Museum
of Contemporary Art, had been wildly different.
His work was referred to as “reductive abstractionism.”
I called Deleget and asked him to explain the term. He was open and generous with his time, equal parts educator and advocate.
The perfect Wabash ambassador.
But I simply didn’t get it.
So I talked with his former teachers.
“Matt just exploded when he was given the opportunity to think non-objectively, not having to stay attached to what is real,” Professor Calisch recalled. “He has very sophisticated ideas that are more conceptually based, where the idea is most important and the actual
execution is almost secondary.”
Professor Huebner told me about the French-American painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp, who moved away from painting to ready-
made objects that challenged traditional notions of art.
“Any object,” Duchamp had argued, could be “elevated to the dignity of a work of art.” In 1915 he hung a snow shovel from the ceiling, and tagged it, “In Advance of the Broken Arm.” It’s the concept that makes art art, not the object. Duchamp was making art for the mind, not the eye.
I finally got it.
I also get why the general public prefers a traditional art museum—where the worthiness of the pieces has been decided for you—to
a museum of contemporary art. Contemporary art forces you to think in new ways. And paradigm shifts can be uncomfortable.
I felt that discomfort.
That first thought I had—I could do that— is part of that, too.
I get it.
Deleget says that “abstraction can be anything and be about anything. Meaningful work can be made anywhere on the planet.”
And he’s an artist’s artist. His work pushes not just the public, but artists and critics and gallery owners, to think differently. He pushes art to its limit—the kind of cutting-edge creativ-ity that moves art forward.
“Zero-Sum” is such a pro-artist piece. Every artist who saw it no doubt appreciated what it said—that ideas can provoke and inspire
and carry value despite the efforts of some to marginalize, discount, or bargain them out of existence.
Deleget really means it when he says his ultimate goal with “Zero-Sum” was to “be a part of the greater discourse.” And he’s done that with artists, art lovers, reporters and writers alike, including this one.
I only wish I could have experienced “Zero-Sum”—and the conversation around it—in person.