Ben Kinmont — Prospectus : Paris — KADIST — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 2 → May 1, 2011

Prospectus is a traveling survey show (in Amsterdam, Paris, New York, San Francisco) in which a selection of works from the past twenty-two years are exhibited and (re)activated. For each location, Kinmont has worked together with a different curator to conceptually develop the premise of the show. Each exhibition is intended to be different and to reflect each curator’s interest in the projects. The source material includes project descriptions and archives, past curated projects, publications from the Antinomian Press, and various photographs and sculptural objects.

Ben Kinmont, Materialization of life into alternative economies, 1996 Courtesy of the artist & galerie Kadist

At the Kadist Art Foundation, the exhibition will concentrate on the notion of exchange and economy through the presentation of six projects from 1992 to the present.

As a preview of the antiquarian book fair at the Grand Palais, Kadist presents Kinmont’s on-going project in the form of a bookselling business Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (begun 1998). This project will be contextualized by earlier works such as The Materialization of life into alter- native economies, a curated show from 1996 and I need you, a project conducted in dialogue with passersby on the street in New York in 1992.

The works selected for the Kadist show investigate different modes of economy developed through an artistic practice. In some cases Kinmont redistributes the art market value of a project to participants and in other cases he adopts other economies as an alternative mode of exchange with people. The works also consider how artists develop a sustainable economy as an art project and when they decide to stop their practice to become something else. With all of these strategies at stake, art becomes a visible part of the social fabric towards a “materialization of life.”

Within the context of his investigations into various business and social economies, Kinmont will activate his Digger Dug project. This project looks at the possibility of helping others through an artistic practice and the ethical concerns surrounding project art. As part of the Digger Dug and for the show at Kadist, Kinmont will issue a new edition of “ethical considerations in project art,” a text he wrote with his graduate students in 2005. The new edition will include commentary by Laurel George, a cultural anthropologist teaching at NYU and be issued as a broadside to be posted in the streets of Paris during the time of the show.

Different perspectives on Kinmont’s work will be presented in the form of an interview with artist Emilie Parendeau and two lectures, one by art historian Sébastien Pluot on the artist group Parasite of which Kinmont was a member (13 April) and the other by curator Krist Gruijthuijsen on gastronomy, self-cannibalism and the art market (26 April). Artist Hugo Bregeau, Kinmont’s former assistant, will be available to assist the public in handling the archives for the duration of the show.

In addition, an updated version of Prospectus, the collection of Kinmont’s project descriptions published earlier by JRP in 2002 (the original edition is out of print), is also being issued. Entitled Prospectus 1988-2010 forty-two works by Ben Kinmont, the new book is co-produced by Kadist Art Foundation, Kunstverein, Air de Paris Fales Library New York University; published by the Antinomian Press; and distributed by JRP Ringier. A French version of Prospectus, published by les éditions Mix, will also be available.