Output details

En Face (Clay Workshop) included in Distortion, a collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale curated by James Putnam, subsequently a solo exhibition at CAC Malaga in Spain

En Face consisted of a series of sculptures resulting from an interactive performance in which a group of participants manipulated wet clay busts depicting the artist in order to transform it into a surrealist ‘Exquisite Corpse’.

For the ‘Bust Party’ in 2010, Turk invited a group of people to his East London studio where they manipulated the wet clay of a further 72 busts creating a body of work which was then exhibited at Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Malaga (25 June to 12 Sept 2010) becoming the first solo exhibition of Turk’s work in Spain. He also took the project to Schrin Kunsthalle, Frankfurt as part of Playing the City 2 and moulded ten further clay heads which, combined with the others, then went on to be shown at Almine Rech, Paris (30 October to 18 December 2010) and Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (24 February to 26 March 2011). A catalogue of the project was published by CAC Malaga at the time of the exhibition: ISBN-978-84-96159-89-1

The exhibition highlighted Turk’s interest in questioning the roles of the contemporary artist, of art in general and of its viewers. Turk’s intention in En Face was to suggest the idea of art as authorless, the result of a collaborative effort by a group of people whose involvement was not just limited to interpretation but who could also put themselves in the artist’s place. His work analyses and questions the concepts of fame, authorship, originality, status and value that continue to affect our understanding of art and of artists’ activities. Using a degree of playful irony, the titles of the busts were anagrams of his own name: Raving Kut, Gavring Tuk, and Gun Irk Vat (all 2010).