Andrea Fraser, “What do I, as an artist, provide?” at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum May 11 to July 16

Over the last two decades, Andrea Fraser has dramatized the relationship between art and its audiences through a series of performances, videos and photographs. Adopting a variety of art-world positions — the docent, the curator, the dealer, the collector, the critic — Fraser exposes and critiques the ways in which the artistic subject, as well as the art object, are staged and reified by the art institution.

In May, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Andrea Fraser, “What do I, as an artist, provide?,” the artist’s first Midwestern solo exhibition. The exhibition will include performance-based videos, photographs, and other works dating from the mid-1980s to the present.

The exhibition will highlight a series of recent C-prints in which Fraser employs appropriated imagery to investigate how art history constructs the artist as a transhistorical subject and, in particular, how that construction is articulated in relation to representations of women. The C-prints are made from images that Fraser first created in 1984 by superimposing slides of modern and old master paintings and drawings, which in turn were culled from museum libraries and gift shops. The resulting works are both dissonant and seductive. For example, in Untitled (Pollock/Titian) #4 (1984/2005), Titian’s Venus gently dematerializes into one of Jackson Pollock’s all-over fields.

The exhibition also explores Fraser’s strategic use of video installation and projection. The humorous Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, shows Fraser — as fictional docent Jane Castleton — leading unsuspecting visitors on a subversively scripted tour of galleries as well as restrooms, water fountains and the museum’s cafeteria. In Official Welcome, 2001 (Hamburg version, 2003), Fraser mimics the personas of a variety of contemporary artists as well as the patrons who support them.

Conversely, for Little Frank and his Carp (2001) — filmed with hidden cameras at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain — Fraser adopts the role of museum visitor, touring the collection and listening to the official audio guide (which recommends, among other things, sensually stroking the museum walls.) Similarly, A Visit to the Sistine Chapel (2005) follows Fraser through the Vatican Museums as she listens to the audio guide and attempts to contemplate the works she encounters despite distracting gift shops and throngs of tourists wearing headphones, taking pictures, and making their own videos of their art experience.

Curated by Meredith Malone, curatorial intern, Andrea Fraser, “What do I, as an artist, provide?” is the second in the Kemper Art Museum’s series of Focus exhibitions, which explore a theme, a single work, or a group of works by a single artist from the permanent collection. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated brochure.

ANDREA FRASER

Born in Billings, Montana, Fraser studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and New York University. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is included in major public collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery, Berlin; and Tate Modern, London. In 2002, a survey of her video work was organized by the Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia. In 2003, the Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany, organized the retrospective Andrea Fraser, Works: 1984 to 2003.

In addition to her solo work, Fraser was a founding member of The V-Girls (1986-1996), a feminist performance group, as well as the artist initiative Parasite (1997-1998) and the cooperative gallery Orchard (2005-present). Her essays and performance scripts have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Art in America, Afterimage, October, Texte zur Kunst, Social Text, Critical Quarterly and Artforum. In 2005, the MIT Press published Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser. She is currently on the art faculty at the University of California in Los Angeles.

MILDRED LANE KEMPER ART MUSEUM

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is committed to furthering critical thinking and visual literacy through a vital program of exhibitions, publications and accompanying events. The museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Today it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United States.

Andrea Fraser, “What do I, as an artist, provide?” will open with a reception for the artist from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, May 11, and remain on view through July 16. In addition, Fraser will present a gallery talk at 6:30 p.m. May 11. Both the reception and the talk are free and open to the public. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is located at the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards. Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed Tuesdays. For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu.