• Obrist in Santander. Calder's failures

If we didn't know anything about contemporary art and if someone, one day, introduced us at a party to Hans Ulrich Obrist, with his Le Corbusier glasses and his suits a little from another time , and if then we asked Obrist what he does, What would he say «I think I would not use the word curator to describe myself because it is used too much. Even the advisors who buy art for collectors call themselves curators. I suppose I would say I do exhibitions. Art exhibitions, but not only art: music, architecture, design, literature ... I would say that I run an institution dedicated to art, the Serpentine Gallery in London. And, well, later I would tell you that making exhibitions is fine because it is a very free format, which allows you to create connections, build bridges . I would say that the job of running a site like the Serpentine is to take art to other fields, to open the doors to it ».

Hans Ulrich Obrist, perhaps the most famous curator in the world, is in Madrid as curator of the Emissaries show by American artist Ian Cheng, promoted by the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation. How to explain the exhibition? Cheng has installed three large screens in the rooms of the Fernando Flórez Foundation on San Mateo Street. In them you can see the infinite evolution of a series of characters that Cheng has endowed with an algorithm that resembles logic, intelligence , and those he has placed in apocalyptic scenarios. The characters interact on their own, as in a fantasy of artificial intelligence. «The work is both futuristic and anachronistic. It is a video that has been released from the loop. It's a video game that plays itself, ”explains Obrist.

Very good. Would Obrist say that this work as lord-who-does-exhibitions , exhibitions such as Cheng's, includes a part of personal expression? Or is it that art is not about that anymore? «For my part, I think not. I think my work has much more to do with creating connections. We live in a world that tends to create silos, isolated spaces. And we have to break that isolation. That's what my job is. In helping art, in looking for a more important place in the world ».

"The success of a project," he continues, "is beyond the fact itself. Filling a room for a few months is a part of the job. But the true measure of success is in the long term. The project I have most satisfied with was never called Do it, it lasted 25 years, started in a museum and ended up in a school curriculum. Something similar happens to me with IanCheng, I have been able to work with him for 10 years. He was a student and he was immediately recognized as someone great. But the important thing has been to complete a path to an exhibition like this , which will never be the same, will always continue to evolve because it has its own nervous system. It is a new experience and that is why it is already a success ».

More: «There is no aesthetic with which we can identify our time. But there are issues: the possibility of the extinction of life due to the environmental crisis , inequality, New experiments in art and technology, in ecology and inequality. If we join these three ideas, what comes out? An instinct to go beyond individualism , to look for something more communal ».

In the end, Obrist is always talking about connections. What do you think, then, of the disconnection of contemporary art with the wide audience? Even with the educated public.

“A few days ago, I took a taxi very early to go to the Serpentine and well, there was the classic conversation of taxi driver and client. -You work here? -Yes because? It turned out that the taxi driver had gone to the park in summer with his 15-year-old daughter [the Serpentine Gallery is in the middle of Kensington Gardens] and for the girl it was a kind of revelation. Now she wants to be an architect and is obsessed with Zaha Hadid . I listened to him and thought that for this kind of thing one gets up to work ... Then I asked him: And you? Did you enter the museum? -No, I don't go to museums. -But if in London the museums are free. - No, museums are not made for me. For people like us ... I really believe that art and architecture have a power, which can transform people. To the taxi driver's daughter, for example. I also grew up in a family that had nothing to do with art. But to be able to exercise that power, we have to get out of our hole, create the greatest number of contact areas between art and the rest of society. Fill the sculpture park, put up posters in the streets, become viral if necessary » .

Unfortunately, a skeptical attitude towards art circulates around the world, as if fairs such as Arco were the naked emperor that runs through the city. Was it good for money to choose art instead of poetry or chamber music? «He would be surprised if he saw the amount of young artists that include poetry in their works. I can give you examples from Canada, Berlin, the United States, Martinique ... At Serpentine we work with poetry, and yes, philanthropy is important to achieve it. I believe in museums that draw on public and private funds ».

What causes skepticism is not philanthropy but investment . «But I don't do that. I dedicate myself to public institutions. My mother cut out the articles on art that appeared in the newspaper in my city ... We are talking about a newspaper in the provinces of Switzerland. When I was a teenager, in the 80s, two clippings that I think were important to me caught my attention. One talked about a German sculptor named Joseph Beuys who had joined the Green Party and said that his sculpture had a meaning In fact, it is the same idea we talked about before ... The other news was about Andy Warhol's arrival in Milan to repaint The Last Supper. Well, what I'm going to do is that this kind of news attracted me to art ».

"Over the years, that news disappeared and was replaced by news about auctions and quotes," continues Obrist. «I don't want to participate in that, I have to talk about the content of art, not those derivatives. Money? Part of our job is to make artists' dreams possible, projects that seemed unrealizable . For that we have to get money? Yes, obviously.

Anything else? Yes: an anecdote by Agnès Varda . «When I met her, she came to see how she worked and told me: what a wonderful freedom you have. My job is to put ideas and images in boxes of 90 minutes or in smaller boxes if they are short films. You have eliminated the boxes. That's what I like about art ».

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