Relational Aesthetics

About

In 1992 Rirkrit Tiravanija moved the office and storeroom of a New York exhibition space into its main room and cooked Thai curry for whoever came in. The artwork was the meal, the conversation and the time spent together. The French curator Nicolas Bourriaud named such work in his book Esthétique relationnelle (1998), after including many of its artists in an exhibition in Bordeaux.

Carsten Höller builds slides and experiments that visitors test with their own bodies; Liam Gillick designs coloured platforms and screens meant to frame discussion; Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe acquired the rights to a minor manga character, AnnLee, and passed her among artists for No Ghost Just a Shell (1999–2002). Precedents include Fluxus and FOOD, the restaurant Gordon Matta-Clark co-founded in 1971. In 2004 the critic Claire Bishop asked whether such convivial situations shut out conflict, a debate that still shapes socially engaged art.