Exhibition: For Real

[From UR magazine January 12 – February 8, 2006, P. 16]

CULTURE SHOCK : ART GROUPIE

WORKING THE CONNECTIONS
Marie Krane Bergman’s Cream Co. whips up
thoughts and theories on the connection
between people and art

words: Suzanne Wu

In a world littered with vagaries and non-sequiturs, it’s rare and refreshing to discuss art with a reasonable person and flat-out disagree. After all, Marie Krane Bergman and I might have reached some sort of tenuous agreement if not for a series of unfortunate missed connections–blame it on incomplete communication, bad timing and injury. Or follow Bergman’s rationale:

“Coincidence is a factor of our views towards art and art-making.” She says somewhat presciently. “So is intention and, of course, desire.”

As it is, I am happily allowed to believe that there is still room for thoughtful conflict over art’s major points, even when there is agreement about the particulars. Bergman is the founder of Cream Co., a Chicago art practice and theory collective that she started as a “way to name the connectedness between persons and things that yield art objects.”

“Some people think Cream Co. is simply my assumed name; others have a broader view,” Bergman says. “Simply, I believe that no individual artist has ever been solely responsible of the production of an art object. It’s pretentious to call a Jackson Pollock a Jackson Pollock, for example. At least we could call it a Krasner/Greenberg/Pollock. Those paintings, like all paintings, were–and continue to be–the result of many factors.”

It’s just as pretentious to imply that those who sat through art history classes–who know, for example, that Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock were married or that Clement Greenberg was and influential art critic who championed abstract expressionism –are better equipped to appreciate art than those who didn’t. But, Bergman does make a point: Everything is connected, and not simply in succession.

“Ascribing an art object to one author is an oversimplification, a way of naming that supports an understanding of our lives as separate, and that (ultimately) promotes a flawed, sexist, racist, view of the world,” Bergman adds.

Still, I’m not so far out of my teens that I don’t remember believing strongly in isolation, and I’ve lived long enough to have done things that can only be ascribed to the desperate struggle to overcome loneliness. Art is one of the ways we attempt to combat separateness; for me, it is the connection. So, yes, Bergman is right to point out that Pollock was not working in a void, but the connections wouldn’t be there without his work. The artist is the person who brings together disparate elements–including their own experiences with race and gender. This is no small feat.

“I would probably use zip codes, dates and exhibition/location histories to name ‘authors’ of artworks, increasing the possibility of being able to use a thing as an object of wonder or the possibility of a revelation,” says Bill Gerhard, a member of Cream Co.

After undergraduate and law school at Northwestern University, Bergman brought together a fluid group of people when she started Cream Co. in graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Cream Co. became transparent when I started to commission colleagues to make art objects,” she recalls. “By working with others I assumed different authorship roles in the construction of my work. It actually ‘began’ before it became transparent. A ‘Krane Co.’ participant changed the name because I had certain criteria related to the qualities of cream.”

Bergman proposed the site-specific “For Real” exhibit opening Jan. 29 at the Hyde Park Art Center. And despite her aversion to single-author works, a ten-panel Marie Krane Bergman painting will be included in the “Figures in the Field” show at the Museum of Contemporary Art beginning Feb. 4. For “For Real,” Cream Co. will recreate the administrative offices of the Hyde Park Art Center in the gallery space, bringing attention to another often overlooked connection: the links among the constellation of people behind an art exhibition and the art itself. The installation will also highlight the connections between art objects and things that are not generally considered art, like a conference table or a stapler.

(Full formal disclosure: The show is curated by Bill Brown, co-editor of Critical Inquiry, which is published by the University of Chicago Press, where I work. When I revealed this to Bergman she said, “You see? Another connection.”)

“Collaboration is not inevitable,” Bergman says. “On the other hand, I think connectedness is inevitable. The results of connectedness may or may not be intended. Indeed, the best art is often located in the unintended consequences of a given undertaking.”

“For Real” opens January 29 at the Hyde Park Art Center’s Ruth Horwich Gallery (5307 S. Hyde Park Bvld., 773 / 324-5520)