Responding to the rapid, often violent transformations of the twenty-first century, contemporary artists have displayed a growing desire to activate art’s documentary capacity: its ability to bear witness to events in the world. The Storyteller focuses on artists who use the story form as a means of comprehending and conveying political and social events. For them, the story functions neither as a purely imagined narrative nor as a piece of verifiable information. It is at once temporal and personal, public and communal, persisting through the listener’s interpretive process and through each subsequent retelling.

The Storyteller includes an international group of artists working in video, photography, drawing, mixed media and installation. In some cases, the artist’s “story” is a drama based on real events, as in the work of Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis, who staged a reenactment of a 1984 clash between striking miners and police in England, or in the video and installation works of Ryan Gander and the collective called Missing Books. In other cases, the stories function less as reconstructions of the past than investigations into the relationship between past and present, as in Liisa Roberts’ and Omer Fast’s work. A third group, which includes Cao Fei, Joachim Koester, Adrian Paci, and Mounir Fatmi, invokes the literary genres of fairy tales, photo essays, and folklore. The last group features projects by Lamia Joreige, Steve Mumford and Michael Rakowitz that involve active participants in contemporary political situations.

Significantly, unlike their postmodern predecessors, the artists in The Storyteller neither take the idea of documentary truth as an object of critique nor abandon fact for fabulation. Rather, they enable individuals—whether themselves, their subjects, or their audience—to construct the story of their unique participation in historical processes, thereby presenting these events in a new and unexpected light. These artists demonstrate that history can be activated through personal experience, re-imagined and thereby re-experienced through the artist’s personal encounter or the character’s narration. The exhibition is co-curated by independent curator and writer Claire Gilman and by Margaret Sundell, director of the Creative Capital l Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program.

Steve Mumford, 13A3, John, a contractor, giving a firearms class to Iraqi police in Khalis,
July, 2004. The Iraqis had to be convinced to replace the rifle stocks on their AKs
(from the series Iraq, 2003–05), 2004

Exhibition Itinerary

Salina Art Center, Salina, Kansas
October 22, 2009 – January 3, 2010

Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, New York, New York
January 29 – April 9, 2010

Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
May 8 – August 29, 2010

AVAILABLE
September 2010 – March 2012