LG Williams · Est. 1969Samizdat Archive
LG Williams Samizdat Archive
SAMIZDAT
1993–2026
Essay: LG Williams presents CLOSED at Super Window Project Kyoto, making gallery absence and institutional protocol the work's material, 2010

CLOSED At Super Window Project

CLOSED turns Super Window Project in Kyoto into an exhibition by shutting the gallery and presenting nothing at all. The press text repeats its own premise with comic relentlessness: there is no point writing about a show nobody will see, because the gallery is closed. The accompanying checklist and images intensify the deadpan refusal, offering black exhibition views, a closure sign, and documentary apparatus for an exhibition whose content is absence. Williams converts institutional protocol--announcement, checklist, photographs, dates, and contact information--into the work's actual material. It is a sharp, self-erasing show about the void, the press release, and the absurd faith that an exhibition exists because the art world says it does.

DATE:
November 14, 2010
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Essay / Critique
NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
LG Williams; Baron Osuna; Julia Friedman; Donald Duck; Donald Trump
INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
Super Window Project; Super Window Project & Gallery; Kyoto; The Estate of LG Williams
KEYWORDS:
nothing as exhibition; institutional protocol as material; checklist for absence; press release as artwork; gallery closed as content; documentation apparatus for void; exhibition existing because art world says so; absence as radical statement
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