Take Me ( I'm yours)

The exhibition Take Me (I’m Yours), at the Jewish Museum, reviews the relationship between the public and the artworks, by highlighting the importance of public participation on the reshaping and the transformation of the exhibition space.

At the show, visitors have the opportunity to directly interact with the works by touching, testing or taking home objects present on it.

Take Me (I’m Yours) comprises paper works, sculptures, installations, digital media, and performance from more than 42 artists. It recreates the 1995 Take Me (I’m Yours) show, initially curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and the artist Christian Boltanski, at the Serpentine gallery. Some of those artists are also participating at the new version of Take Me (I’m Yours), for example, Gilbert & George, Lawrence Weiner, Christian Boltanski and Carsten Höller.

Höller is a Belgium-born artist, who lives and works in between Sweden and Gana. He is well known for his large-scale conceptual installations that serve as experiments and frequently require participation from the public to take their final form. His works focus on human behavior, the questioning of logic, uncertainty, altered states of mind and perception.  For example, the installation Pill Clock, (2015), a pile of red and white color pills, released every 3 seconds, by a mechanical control drop machine. This installation invites people to consume the pills or take it with them, meanwhile questioning our decision-making process.

 Christian Boltanski is a French-born artist, who lives and works in Paris. He uses medias such as sculptures, installations, photography and painting to convey concepts of loss, memory, and death. A good example of that is the installation Dispersion, (1993-2016), which offers used clothing and bags to visitors. Through this work, the artist discusses the artwork impermanency and the ephemerality of the exhibition space, which reaffirms the main conception of the show.

Another example is The Art of Today Belongs to Us, (1988-2016), created by the American born artist Lawrence Weiner, who is considered one of the pioneer figures of 1960’s conceptual art. In Weiner’s work, language is the main medium of expression, and the works present at show are a temporary tattoo, a do it yourself stencil and a wall installation that use pidgin language, a kind of speech that combines elements from existing languages and develops when the speakers don’t share a common tongue, which offers a general means to communicate and evolve.

Furthermore, the works of the English duo Gilbert & George, a series of pin buttons with inscriptions like: Good save the Queen, Fuck the Teachers, Ban Religion, etc., and the installation The Banners, (2015). A work made of watercolor paper mounted on linen, red and black spray paint and metal buttons, which resulted from the artist performance at the 2015, Serpentine gallery, Marathon’s show. During that show, the artists stood silently for around 4 min. in front of an audience, holding banners that read: Burn that Book and Fuck the Planet. Gilbert & George are well known for the direct use of urban language on flyers, posters and sex advertisement. Media that they employ to directly interact on culture by reaching a large audience.

The works described above are only a sample of the Take Me (I’m Yours) show, however, they clearly exemplify the main concepts of the show and represent a link between the initial Take Me (I’m Yours) exhibition and the current one.