54th Carnegie International
Carnegie Museum of Art
TommaAbts
Pawel Althamer
Francis Alys
Mamma Andersson
Chiho Aoshima
KaoruArima
Kutlug Ataman
John Bock
Lee Bontecou
Robert BreerFernando Bryce
Kathy Butterly
Maurizio Cattelan
Paul Chan
AnneChu
Robert Crumb
Jeremy Deller
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Peter Doig
Trisha Donnelly
Harun Farocki
Saul Fletcher
Isa Genzken
Mark Grotjahn
Rachel Harrison
Carsten Holler
Katarzyna Kozyra
Jim Lambie
MangelosJulie Mehretu
Senga Nengudi
Oliver Payne and Nick Relph
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
Neo Rauch
Ugo Rondinone
Eva Rothschild
Yang Fudong'man, "Reply to Clement·iew in The Nation,
47' (originally unpublished),

1rican Artists on Art, 17.

nore popular idea
j the ultimate foundation for

But it goes even beyond that; it is also the shape of our trajectories
as we move from one place to another, as illustrated by the roaming ofRondinone's boy and girl and by Mehretu's whooshing lines.
For almost thirty years, Isa Genzken has created challenging
objects, photographs, and installations, many of which take as their subject
modernist architecture and its symbolism of progress, power, and aesthetics
as well as its relationship to urban space and to life on a human scale. .
Her most recent series Empire/Vampire-small-scale sculptures perchedon pedestals-was begun in late 2001, after the artist had witnessed thedestruction of the World Trade Center in New York. No direct relationshipexists between that disaster and the majority of these small tableaux,in which toys and tennis shoes, shards of mirror, and sheets of plastic are set
in violent interaction; but one underlying theme of their wildly imaginativeand disturbing scenarios is that of geometric form run amok, as toweringslabs of mirrored glass threaten defenseless dolls lying prone amidst
devastated landscapes in miniature.
Barnett Newman once wrote that "true abstraction" can only be
discussed in metaphysical terms, 24 and in fact the notion of an autonomous
art through which to explore the unknowable depths of human existence
is closer to a religious strategy than to a pragmatic or empirical one.25
The transition from experience to belief through the vehicle of the art
object is an abiding interest in Rachel Harrison's work, one that links her
photographs to her sculptures. Untitled (Perth Amboy) (2001) is a series ofphotos depicting a single window of a house in suburban New Jersey uponwhich an apparition of the Virgin Mary had been reported. Harrison was
drawn to Perth Amboy because she wanted to record the phenomenon,
to find visible proof of a mystical occurrence. What she ended up with is achronicle of devotion, a nuanced study of how people go about believing.
Each photo in the series details a particular trace: a shadow of a hand laid
upon the spot where the holy image is supposed to have appeared;
an outline of a family photograph pressed up against the sacred glass;the mist on that glass; the residue of hundreds of tears, handprints, and thehot breath of emotion. Although begun perhaps with the intention of
making material what might otherwise have been purely metaphysicalspeculation, Perth Amboy is peculiar in that it serves neither to disprove
nor to substantiate the miracle of the Virgin in the window. Movingly,
it documents, in a drab suburb in Anywhere, USA, the existence of faith.
Harrison's work, to a certain degree, indicates not only that it is bylooking that one can redeem oneself, but also that looking at art can leadto enlightenment. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's practice of reading to
the dead takes this notion to an extraordinary conclusion. Motivated by theconviction that it is possible to communicate with the essence or soul of adead person through stories, poetry, and song-in other words, throughart-the artist has taken it upon herself in recent years to search out people
who have died anonymously and to soothe them by reading or singing
folktales and love stories to them. What may sound ghoulish when merely
described becomes touching when witnessed, so evident is the artist's
human compassion and Buddhist faith. Just as Harrison's Perth Amboy is arecord of the artist's pilgrimage-her search and the evidence of what she

28found-Rasdjarmrearnsook's videotapes, shot using a video camera
on a tripod in most instances, are not the artwork, but rather a convenientdevice with which to document it. The pieces themselves exist both in
the act of undertaking this practice and, perhaps more interesting,in the connection made between the artist and the soul of the dead person
receiving the comfort of the songs and stories, both beautiful and familiar.
No evidence is given for the success of this connection; its existence isa matter of faith on the part of the viewer. It is possible then, to experience
this simple work on two levels: first, to watch the artist practice herbelief; and second, to believe with her ourselves. Laura Hoptman
Senga Nengudi, in her recent work, embraces head-on a kind of animismand shares with Rasdjarmrearnsook the notion of art as an instrumentof healing, spiritual and otherwise. In the 1970s, Nengudi became known
for sculptures made out of humble objects such as nylon stockings,
which she expertly transformed into elegant abstract compositions thatwere at once biomorphic and precisely, movingly human-in a manner thattranscended the simply narrative. In recent years, she has become moreinterested in the creation of environments that are spiritualized and mademagic by the ritual arrangement of materials. Her sand paintings, whichrange from small scale to room size, partake in a tradition that is shared bygroups as diverse as Native American tribes of the southwestern UnitedStates and Buddhists in Southeast and East Asia. Like Rasdjarmrearnsook'ssinging, the ritualistic spreading and raking that go into the making ofthese complex and ephemeral objects are what power the spell. The motifsof Nengudi's paintings are decidedly abstract, but their forms remain
strangely familiar. We stare at them as we would at an ancient handprint
in a cave; we know intimately from whence it comes, but that does notmitigate the mystery and awe it inspires.
Both Rasdjarmrearnsook's and Nengudi's manner of devotion isunconventional, in fact transgressive, in its bold mixing of Eastern andWestern religious traditions. Francis Alys' series of small paintings
entitled The Prophet (begun in 1992) partakes in the venerable, and specific,
tradition of Catholic devotional painting. Intimate in scale, like Mexican
retablos (Alys has lived in Mexico for almost twenty years), a numberof these works feature subjects that are overtly religious, such as one figure
blessing a second, which kneels before it. In other works the motifs are
more ambiguous. From the figure who folds his hands behind his back in apose of contemplation or submission to an odd vignette of a woman walking
with one of her legs in a clay urn, the iconography of these paintings
identifies them as parables, but of no known religious doctrine. They
share with their more readably devotional counterparts an intense, quiet,
almost sacred air, but in Alys' works, this is created by their allusive yetnonspecific content as well as by the dense opacity of their coolly coloredsurfaces. Alys has said that these works are "little windows" onto a
more spiritual plane, one that the artist mayor may not believe exists.
For him, it is the very possibility of its existence that is important.
Maurizio Cattelan has often tangled with religion and othermodes of organization and control in his angry, funny actions (taping'1.

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