Page 51 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

nstallation view, Off the Record, on view April 2–September 27, 2021,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Photo: David Heald © Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, 2021.

Sarah Charlesworth, Herald Tribune: November 1977, 1977 (printed 2008).
Twenty-six chromogenic prints, 23 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. (59.7 x 41.9 cm) each,
edition 2/3. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Purchased
with funds contributed by the Photography Committee 2008.50. © Sarah
Charlesworth

OFF THE RECORD
New York - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Off the Record features works by 13 artists who challenge
the authority of mainstream documentation and question its
role in constructing history.

Historical, documentary, state, and other records became
the collectively accepted communicators of “truth” through
their perceived objectivity and comprehensiveness. They
presumably tell a story from a place of remove, with all
relevant details included. Off the Record confronts this
pretense, bringing together the work of contemporary
artists who interrogate, revise, or otherwise query dominant
narratives and the transmission of culture through official
“records.” Drawn from the context of journalist reportage,
the phrase “off the record” here refers to accounts
that have been left out of mainstream narratives. The
exhibition’s title can also be understood in its verb form:
to undermine or “kill” the record as a gesture of redress.
Across various manipulations of “records,” artists in this
exhibition seek to call out the power dynamics obscured by
official documentation, complicate the idea of objectivity
and truth, and surface new narrative possibilities.

WORLD of ART 51