-
W
- Art & Design
Two For One
In an age of outsize egos, some artists have chosen to pair up to present a single, seamless vision. Linda Yablonsky reports on today’s talented twosomes.
November 2010
The first-ever collaborative to represent the United States at the 2011
Venice Biennale, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are best known
for the geopolitical and cultural metaphors they’ve mined from daily
life. In their most hypnotic performance work, Stop, Repair, Prepare, a
pianist stands in a hole cut into the center of a vintage Bechstein
grand piano and plays Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (one of Hitler’s favorite
songs and the anthem of the European Union) from inside the instrument
while pushing it around a gallery with great effort. As with any
longtime couple, there’s plenty of “conversation, discussion, and
argumentation,” says Lisa Freiman, the Indianapolis Museum of Art
curator heading up the U.S. Pavilion. Only in their case, she adds,
“they argue with each other incessantly until they get to a point where
they both agree. So it’s very productive.” Allora and Calzadilla are
shown here installing Scale of Justice Carried by Shore Foam, 2010, part
of a recent exhibition at the Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris.
November 2010
More Art & Design
