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THE Q&A: HANS ULRICH OBRIST, CURATOR

In November Art Review magazine named Hans Ulrich Obrist the number-one most influential person in the art world. But according to Obrist, the excitement hasn’t interrupted activities at London’s Serpentine Gallery, where he is co-director of exhibitions and programmes and director of international projects. For decades, Obrist has authored analytical commentaries on contemporary art, while simultaneously redefining its presentation at renowned institutions such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Obrist also conducts interviews. In the past few years he has released two 1,000-page volumes of his collected conversations with the most talented artists, architects, scientists, engineers and thinkers living today. Most recently he interviewed Jeff Koons for the artist's new book "Hulk Elvis", which features works from the series of the same name. 

It could be intimidating to interview someone with a C.V. like Obrist's, but the man at the other end of the telephone line is disarming and reassuringly self-possessed. He draws his interlocutor into a cocoon of seemingly all-encompassing knowledge about everything involving aesthetics. Obrist speaks incredibly fast, and crams in so many snippets of insight that it would be impossible to relay them all in one pass. Here we present the highlights, including his thoughts on the trouble with meetings, the world's most exciting new art scene and why it is vital to consider posterity.

More Intelligent Life: What did you eat for breakfast this morning?

Hans Ulrich Obrist: I always have coffee and porridge for breakfast. My breakfast happens very early, at 6.30am, because I wake up early. I founded a club, which is called the Brutally Early Club. It’s basically a breakfast salon for the 21st century where art meets science meets architecture meets literature. The reason why I decided to do my club at 6.30am in different cafés, which are open so early, is because in 21st-century cities it’s become very difficult to improvise. Everybody has a schedule and it becomes really difficult to decide from one day to the next to gather for a meeting. You have to plan it weeks and weeks in advance. It’s so important to have improvisation in cities. Most people are free at 6.30, so that’s the idea of the Brutally Early Club and I have done it ever since I moved to London.

MIL: At this point in your career it seems that you could curate at any museum or gallery of your choosing, but you’ve been with Serpentine for quite a bit. What’s special to you about working there?

HUO: It’s a very exciting collaboration with Julia Peyton-Jones, the director [of the gallery]. I am the co-director and we began working together in 2006. That collaboration is one aspect, and another is obviously the park. It’s the gallery, the park, the world, and it’s in Kensington Gardens. Artists really love the location because it’s completely a world in its own. There’s nothing else there. When they have an exhibition it is really their world with art in the park. Another thing that is special is that admission is free, so it’s art for all.

MIL: And it’s in London, which is a city that you love and a perfect place for your open-ended model of curation that doesn’t rely on a city or a locale. You seem to have settled down from your constant travels in the '90s. It’s like you’ve reversed the process and are making the work you want to see come to you now.

HUO: From 1991 to 2000 I was totally nomadic. I was travelling 300 days a year and building out my research. These were a bit like my learning and migrating years, so to say. Goethe called it lehr und wanderjahre, this sort of idea of having these years where one would learn and migrate.

In 2000 a new decade started, and it was sort of my second professional decade. I felt that it would be important to somehow have a place that was more grounded and with regular exhibition activity. It would also allow feedback. Otherwise you just book the show and you are already at the next one, and you never hear or feel what happens with the show. When I began this work the art world was still limited to art centres mostly in the West, but today the art world is totally global, particularly in the non-Western world like China, India, and so on. For me, the most exciting experience the last couple of years has been the Brazilian art scene. Brazil is completely exploding with an extraordinary optimism and an extraordinary energy. One cannot just sit in one place because you miss out on the extraordinary historical circumstances with so many new centres.

MIL: You’re also a big proponent of research and ensuring art from different cultures is documented for history’s sake. 

HUO: As Larry Halprin says, it’s a protest against forgetting. That means not only looking at younger and emerging artists, which is obviously a main focus of my work, but also to look into positions from the past and pioneers and artists who are maybe forgotten but need to be remembered. It’s key to see that there are not all of a sudden all these great artists, but there have been very interesting artists throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s. It’s important to make this archaeological investigation.

MIL: You seem to be embracing a sort of globalisation of the art world.

HUO: It’s interesting because in some way the forces of globalisation, so to say, have always been a part of every society, and it’s not the first time that we have experienced globalisation. But in our time we’re being exposed to a particularly strong or extreme form of globalisation and I think that these forces are not only effective in society at large but also effective in the world of art. To some extent the question is always how to work within globalisation.

MIL: I’d like to switch gears for my last question. You’ve interviewed Jeff Koons many times and one of the interviews is included in the new "Hulk Elvis" book, which was just released. He is primarily an object-based artist, which seems to be far away from the non-object-based art you’re so interested in at the moment. But I have a feeling you can easily connect these two types of work. How do you reconcile these different mediums? 

HUO: As you say I’ve interviewed Jeff Koons many times, and we are actually working on a book right now where all these interviews I’ve done with him are going to be gathered together. I’ve done about eight interviews with him and then two interviews with him and Rem Koolhaas about architecture and art. Mr Koons’s work has always inspired architects, which I think is very interesting. I think he is an artist who has reinvented himself so many times and reinvented so many different series. Earlier this year we had a big exhibition that Julia Peyton-Jones and I organised at the Serpentine Gallery—the Popeye exhibition. He is clearly an artist who inspires a younger generation of artists. For example, [he has influenced] Tino Sehgal, the German artist who is going to do a big solo project at the Guggenheim Museum in New York [opening on January 29th]. He is one of the youngest artists ever to get the whole Guggenheim to himself. He’s also an artist that never works with objects. He basically works with situations. It’s a non-mediated experience and so in this sense it’s completely and totally different from Jeff Koons. Therefore it’s very interesting that Mr Sehgal has what he calls the “Koons test”.

MIL: I’ve heard of this. He says if they someone dislikes Koons then he doesn’t want to work with him or her.

HUO: Exactly. And he’s an artist in his early 30s. So it all shows how Koons’s work resonates with a young generation of artists and I think that’s always very important—how art travels and if a new generation artists connects to a practice. That is super relevant.

~ ROCCO CASTORO
     
 

 Image credit: Hans Ulrich Obrist on Myspace