A Thing Is A Hole In The Thing It Is Not

By only

Saturday April 1, 2006

An interview with Christian Kliegel

Local artist Christian Kliegel, the man behind Gloom, Boom, and Doom, is up to another one of his elaborate reclamation projects. Initially motivated by the now defunct Vancouver Stock Exchange’s blatantly corrupted activity, Kliegel’s project has continued trekking ambitiously through fields of paper piles, earthwork histories, abandoned mines, and stocks with the intent to fold business and art system practices into each other.

ONLY: Christian, your new show at Access has already started in a way, is that right? What are all these news releases people have been receiving?
Christian: I basically started the show a month early. When it was time to submit press information I still wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to put in the gallery so it made sense to use the press release as another component to the work. It was also a way to buy a little more time. I used the format of the gallery press release but merged it with the type of news release that stock companies use whenever they wish to promote, reassure, and release positive developments to their share-holders.
ONLY: I’ve heard you’ve found a cunning way to exit your duties at the artist talk. Who is this Charles fellow?
C: Charles Haynes is a gentleman who was introduced to me by Neil Campbell. He’s been playing with the stock market and wrote a program that analyzes option contracts on the stock market and calculates possible profit percentages. I thought it would be more interesting for Charles to teach the audience ways of making money on the stock market rather than having them listen to me talk about my work. It’s definitely more interesting for myself.
ONLY: You mentioned that you’re not using your artist fee to help pay for anything in the show. What will you be doing with it instead?
C: Part of the stipulation for what’s in the gallery is that it was free so I could invest my money into the stock market. Putting money into a money instrument is one way to try and get money for future shows. This whole show is about investing, art, and stocks so it makes sense that in the one place where money is involved I used it appropriately. It’s using the money as a material.
ONLY: So if you’ve been investing all of your money and time outside of the gallery and in the stock exchange what’s going to happen with the actual gallery space?
C: Often times within Earthworks there were either artists producing art works in the landscape and natural world, or they would take natural materials and place them into the gallery. In this case the natural world is sort of the business world. It’s not just about the landscape this time, it’s about the companies ‘dealing’ with the landscape. So it makes sense not to take away the material from the landscape but to take it away from these companies and then create an interplay between their material and the gallery system.For the longest time I was thinking about what object I could extract from the investing world as I’ve done previously with other objects like the milk crates and movie signs. For a while I was perplexed because I couldn’t find the object I was looking for. Because, there are no objects essentially. Stocks are information based, abstract. So then I figured out that it would make sense to take information away. When I look for objects to collect I assume the role of a person in that system.