The Conceptual Underground (2018), Hal 9000 + Beatrice Portinari, GCGCA(i)
The Conceptual Underground
Art as a Supra-Aesthetic Regime of Truth
Amos Rex Art Museum, Helsinki
20 Mar - 20 Jun 2018
‘For cultures, like individuals, can become prisoners of images of themselves, lulled by the sheer repetition of a few pat phrases into believing that they have identified their distinctive nature.’
- Stefan Collini
This exhibition presents a series of documents from a secret archive representing a lifelong investigation in search of the truth about an obscure underground conceptual movement rumoured to have existed below the surface of New York City since the mid-1970s.
The conceptual underground movement, purported to be known as ‘The Conceptual Underground’, is supposed to have begun life around 1975, after the high-point of Conceptual Art (with a capital ‘C’). They speculate that 'High Conceptual Art’ did not 'die a natural death', but rather instead were forcibly expelled from the history of art - by the ‘forces of formalist modernism.’
Another artifact is a purportedly rare and little-known early print-run edition of the journal Art-Language from September 1974, the authenticity of which has yet to be confirmed, which summarizes in four points the movement’s attempt to express its inexorable opposition to the ‘asetheticist impulse’ in art history.
Following a loosely constructed timeline, this apparent collective artistic statement was made prior to the movement’s decision to go underground, as it is seen as the pretext the beginning of a systematic targeting and suppression of its members.
According to one document, the entrance to the movement was successfully discovered from the basement crypt of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue, following by navigation of thousands of secret subway underground tunnels beneath New York City. Upon reaching the inner sanctum, 'Burning Down the House' could be heard playing on a church organ.
The Omega Notebook, pp.1-2; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Omega Notebook, p.1 [including an image of the statue of Laocoön and His Sons); The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Omega Notebook, p.2; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Capricornus Notebook, pp.231-232; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Capricornus Notebook, p.231; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Capricornus Notebook, p.232 [includes photographs documenting the rediscovery of the movement]; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
An image from the Draco Notebook, p.601; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Andromeda Notebook, pp.44-45; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The Andromeda Notebook, p.44; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
The penultimate page of the Gemini Notebook [the image may depict a key member of movement during their supposed imprisonment by 'Formalist Modernism' between 1975-1978]; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
‘The process that transpires in artworks and is brought to a standstill in them, is … the same social process in which the artworks are embedded’; The Blue House; Towards a Free Revolutionary Art (2017), GCGCA(i)
The Axis of Aesthetic Ideology; Art-Language, Vol.3, No.1 (September 1974) [REDACTED]; The Conceptual Underground (2018), GCGCA(i)
