"…I embrace chance"
Being open to ideas, recommendations, and incidentals helps not only in a general design process, also when it hast to do with the organization of an art exhibition. I like the attitude of the South African artist Marlene Dumas, who said in an interview for Artkrush, about her involvement in the organization of her recent exhibition: “…I embrace chance”.
AK: For Measuring Your Own Grave, how involved were you in the decision to organize the show thematically, rather than chronologically?
MD: Absolutely involved — I know the difficulties of my works. I did it in dialogue with the curator, Connie Butler, and we worked with the architecture of the museum and the characteristics of the pieces. The works start to talk to each other when they get together in the rooms, and some don't like each other and seem to do each other no good, while others form new and better relationships when they (sometimes accidentally) meet. In Amsterdam, my friend and studio manager Jolie van Leeuwen and I had already tried out some combinations, working with a two-dimensional floor plan, but in three dimensions, things always change again. I always ask the members of the hanging team for suggestions too, when I'm in doubt. I'm not a linear thinker or maker — I embrace chance.
Interview with Marlene Dumas. Artkrush. July 9, 2008.
The exhibition: Measuring Your Own Grave
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
AK: For Measuring Your Own Grave, how involved were you in the decision to organize the show thematically, rather than chronologically?
MD: Absolutely involved — I know the difficulties of my works. I did it in dialogue with the curator, Connie Butler, and we worked with the architecture of the museum and the characteristics of the pieces. The works start to talk to each other when they get together in the rooms, and some don't like each other and seem to do each other no good, while others form new and better relationships when they (sometimes accidentally) meet. In Amsterdam, my friend and studio manager Jolie van Leeuwen and I had already tried out some combinations, working with a two-dimensional floor plan, but in three dimensions, things always change again. I always ask the members of the hanging team for suggestions too, when I'm in doubt. I'm not a linear thinker or maker — I embrace chance.
Interview with Marlene Dumas. Artkrush. July 9, 2008.
The exhibition: Measuring Your Own Grave
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
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