Benjamin Cook: My Art is in Your Hands

The project I Give Up: My Art is in Your Hands came from the way that I interact with art.  Not living in a part of the world that is considered to be an “art hub,” my interaction with  contemporary art comes mostly through the Internet.  It seemed significant to me that I could view the work of an established or an unknown artist through a single Tumblr feed.

I graduated with a degree in painting from the University of Louisville.  While I do enjoy the visceral immediacy of working with paint, I constantly struggled with its limitations as an art form.   After reading Arthur Danto’s After the End of Art, I took notice of the constraints of only using paint and began to experiment with other mediums and surfaces.

I selected ten institutions across the United States to be part of my project.  For me, the QR code is the link between the digital world and our physical one.  I am certainly diving into the institutionalized art community in a sink or swim style, but I am not too concerned with my relationship to the museums for this particular piece.  I didn’t make the work with even the smallest hope of them accepting it, acknowledging it, or showcasing it, but rather with the intention of distributing the project online.  I spent hours and hours submitting and emailing it to different blogs and websites in hopes of using that as a sort of “gallery opening.”

I realized before beginning the series that museums are not in the business of finding new and unknown artists.  I have not received any response from the ten institutions, but that doesn’t surprise me at all.  It’s left up to galleries, collectors, the media, and smaller arts organizations to filter out “unqualified” work.  It’s precisely that “top-down” process that I think clashes with the way art works now.

Featured Image: Benjamin Cook, Take it or Leave it, (CAC), Gold Leaf on Mylar, 2013, from the series I Give Up: My Art is in Your Hands