The imaginary
A lot of art, in particular conceptual art, requires a suspension of disbelief. How do you know that something is what the artist (or anyone) says it is? You just have to trust them. And, of course, to do that you have to want to.
There is a whole genre of invisible art. Sometimes you can feel it like Ryan Gander’s genius work at Documenta, sometimes you can smell it like Anicka Yi’s incredible scent works, sometimes you just have to allow it to roll around in your brain like Robert Barry’s phenomenal performance work, one of which I had the honor of doing for Peter Eleey‘s exhibition The Imaginary Thing at the Aspen Art Museum. I was asked to whisper into a hole in the earth a secret that only I knew. The idea of how to contend with the invisible seems particularly poignant today. And, again, art is happy to be of service.
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