Variable words about Douglas Huebler

Variable words about Douglas Huebler
A talk at Really Free School  18 Feb 2011  5pm  34-35 Fitzroy Square  London

Douglas Huebler has been on my radar since 2008. From that year I try to trace his publications or see his works. It is not easy task, he is not as much popular as other Conceptual artists- at least I got this impression. There is interesting essay about him written by a fellow student of him and artist Mike Kelley called Shall We Kill Daddy? In that text written in 1997 there is a part: “In much of Huebler’s early work there had been a tension between surface blandness and infinite meaning. Take for example Duration Piece #2, Paris, 1970, where the viewer is presented with six snapshots said to illustrate the ‘timeless serenity’ of a statue seen in the distance behind some cement trucks. The accompanying text informs us of the mechanistic intervals at which the statue was photographed, but also tells us that the photos have been shuffled so they are chronologically out of sequence. No longer reportage, we are instead presented with time scrambled – which produces, I suppose, the statue’s ‘timeless serenity’.” [Read full text here]

Huebler is important for my practise and to be precise all his works where he combines photography and text. He is an artist with an interest in humans, in fellow people and there is space for fun in his works too. Bellow I attach one of his works and here’s a picture with more works, bio info and bibliography. [Images from the book: Douglas Huebler, Camden Arts Centre, 2002]