At Karpidas Collection, an ambitious art exhibition with a Jungian twist
Filed under Visual Arts at Apr 2018
Rick Brettell, Art critic
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With private art spaces cropping up throughout the world from China and Russia to Europe and the Americas, we in Dallas can be happy that our city is taking a leadership role in this type of institution.
Being private offers complete freedom for curators and owners to do what they want without having to work within the parameters and budgets of governments or boards of trustees. But what they offer in the way of freedom is often experienced by only a privileged few, because these institutions have little or no obligation to allow the public access.
One of the most ambitious and interesting such spaces is the Karpidas Collection in the Design District. Situated in a purpose-built building (rather than a re-purposed warehouse or power plant), the building houses the Karpidas Foundation, its collection and large-scale private gallery spaces for varying installations from the collection.
The Karpidas Collection was formed in Great Britain and Greece by Pauline Karpidas, the British widow of Greek shipping magnate Constantine Karpidas, and her Dallas-based son and daughter-in-law, Elisabeth and Panos Karpidas. Elisabeth is the executive director of the Karpidas Family Foundation. With more than 1,000 works located in Dallas, the foundation has worked with three curators to mount three successive exhibitions drawn exclusively from the collection.
The exhibition's title, "The Anatomy of Disquiet," sums up an aesthetic experience that is unique to the Karpidas Collection.
(Karpidas Collection/Courtesy)
The current exhibition, whose run has been extended until May 15, was curated by the Dallas-based, UNT- and Yale-educated artist-curator Brandon Kennedy, who has delved into the collection with a much more expansive mission than his two predecessors, Gavin Delahunty and Olivia Shao. Yet all three curators have been forced to deal with a collection decidedly different from any other in Dallas — one rooted in complex figural imagery and, ultimately, in the ideas of art based on the writing and thinking of psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
Brandon Kennedy submitted to Jungian analysis to help him prepare for his task as curator of the exhibition.
Dallas has a surprisingly deep Jungian community, with institutional bases in both the Dallas Institute of Arts and Humanities and the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center, and these roots have been explored by Kennedy, who, in order to prepare deeply for his task as curator, willingly submitted to Jungian analysis as he worked through the many issues raised by the collection.
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This commitment results in a truly extraordinary exhibition and one at odds with the collections of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Dallas Museum of Art and other prominent local collections. Indeed, the Karpidas Collection brings to Dallas an idea of contemporary art practice that is at odds with those already in the city and, hence, a real challenge to our audiences.
There are works by Barbara Kruger, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Paul McCarthy and other artists familiar to those of us art addicts who haunt the Warehouse, the DMA, the Hoffman Collection, the Power Station and other prominent collections, but there are other artists whom even as savvy a curator as Kennedy had never encountered, making his task a more interesting one than rearranging works by known artists.
The exhibition's run has been extended to May 15 in the Karpidas Collection's purpose-built building in the Dallas Design District.
Kennedy also made what is, in some respects, an even more radical decision — to jettison the "less-is-more" installation practice de rigueur for contemporary art and to replace it with an overload of art juxtaposed in groupings suggested by subject rather than artist and making links between unusual works by well-known artists and compelling works by more obscure artists.
The easiest way to deal with a collection rich in figural imagery and in brazen sexual and bodily imagery would be to omit anything that might be offensive and to arrange works by the best-known artists in groups. Kennedy would have none of that. Indeed, he himself went on a curatorial and personal journey that was made possible by this ambitious, important collection.
Certain of the works, including a rarely shown photograph by Cindy Sherman that has both male and female genitalia and a painting by Warhol made when assistants urinated on a canvas placed on the floor, could not easily be shown in a public museum for fear of offending patrons. The Karpidas Collection has no such fears, and the result is an exhibition that stirs deep feelings — sometimes of revulsion, other times of wonder — that differ from viewer to viewer.
Normally open by appointment only, the private Karpidas Collection will be open to the public April 20 and 27 and May 11 from 1 to 4 p.m.
The exhibition's title, "The Anatomy of Disquiet," sums up an aesthetic experience that is unique to the Karpidas Collection. Kennedy's own curatorial method is explained in a deftly written curatorial statement available to all visitors. Expect to be challenged. Expect to want to reject this art. Expect to learn more about artists like George Condo, R.H. Quaytman, Juergen Teller, Evan Holloway, Urs Fischer and Ryan Mosley.
There are no labels identifying the works — only a handout with information attached to installation photos. My advice is to walk through the exhibition slowly, with nothing to guide you but yourself. If you do this, you will approximate the journey of self-discovery made by Kennedy and get away from the "ticking the artist boxes" that most of us do as we go through exhibitions.
If any collection is about the fearless exploration of artists into the depths of human emotions and the disturbing facts of our bodies, it is the Karpidas Collection.
By appointment only at 214-984-5142, the Karpidas Collection is at 1532 Hi Line Drive in Dallas
UPDATED, April 21 at 1:55 p.m.: This post was updated to reflect that the Karpidas Collection has cancelled several planned public showings and is now open only by appointment.