The critic Michael Fried, attacking the new American artists of the 60s, accused them of "theatricality". Since then, artists have joyfully trodden on this anti-theatrical prejudice, and installation has become the dominant form of art. The Henry Moore Foundation Studio at Dean Clough, with its stone vaults and iron pillars, is the perfect stage for Robert Clark's Plans for the Real World Parts 1-12, an installation that is also a potted history of the genre.
Clark is also a critic - one who contributes to this paper, infact - and it shows in this sequence of 12 chambers containing calf-skin gloves, scorched paintings, scrawled letters, even an art encyclopaedia. There are invocations of Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer, and an overall chaos that says, in red smeared letters, Julian Schnabel. None of these artists are the kind Michael Fried would have in his modernist club. On the contrary they are preening, bombastic, stagy types, and Clark - almost wistfully - emulates their grand manner of performance.
A white lobby has a wall text that makes the theatrical game explicit: "The space, a temporary set-up. The protagonists, not all there. The audience, unknown." Inside you study props, costumes, bits of script. Bits of black lace, phallic elephant's tusk, shower curtain and saucy snapshots tell us this is a self-exposing male sexual confession.
Desire is a will-o'-the-wisp and so is the content of this installation. The best bit is only visible through a glass window as you look down the length of Clark's wooden structure to see the spine of iron columns concealed by his painted rooms. The spookiness of this sealed space drew attention to the fussiness of the rooms. As he seems to be aware, this artist is a bit of a ham.
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