Charles Gute, recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship in 2005, Jentel Foundation Residency, MacDowell Colony Visual Artist Residencies, and the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Fine Arts Fellowship, works with installation art, performance art, video art, and wall art. A good amount of his work is conceptual based and is focused on time based objects and different ways to show the passing of time. Gute is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery and has been said to “pay tribute to ground breaking individuals throughout art history who have impacted contemporary art.” He received his MFA from the New Genres Department at San Francisco Art Institute in 1988. His first solo exhibit was in 1990 at The Lab in San Francisco and in 1991 he won the San Francisco Arts Commission’s “Exploration: City Site.” From 1998-2003 the Patricia Sweetow Gallery represented him. In the spring of 2005, Gute was a Visiting Artist in residence at the Art Department of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
One of his notable installation pieces that was installed in various different galleries from 1988-2003 was his duct tape piece titled “Duct Tape Funeral March”. This was a time-based installation and it was installed in the Gales Gates Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. There were 13 rolls of duct tape attached at the top of a 16foot wall. All of the rolls of tape were released on opening day and it took them 8 hours to completely unravel. What viewers soon found out was that there was sheet music attached to the rolls. The song that was playing through was “Funeral March” by Beethoven. The slow unraveling of the tape mimicked the somber work of Beethoven’s compositions.
A performance piece that Gute did in honor of artist Joseph Beuys was titled “The Joseph Beuys Memorial Barbecue” and took place in 1985. One his homemade porch install, there was a gallery pedestal that held 30 lbs. of fatty ground beef. Standing close by the large hunk of beef was Gute wearing a white apron with a silk-screened image of the late Beuys on the front of it. The performance was said to function as performance, reception, and a wake in Beuys’ honor. While Gute was performing/cooking, he spoke to the audience about Beuys’ life and work.
Another one of his performances that had more of a sullen approach to it was titled “My Dog Is Tired” and was performed in 1986. The stage is dark and then a spotlight hits the center of the stage to illuminate the dog lying on the middle of the stage floor. From offstage, a red rubber ball rolls onto the stage and stops near the supine dog. The dog does not respond and the audience is left with this site for a few moments until the lights go down the performance is over.
A more recent project of Gute’s was one he just completed at the Socrates Sculpture park in New York. This piece was titled “More Matter In General.” Using wood, enamel, vinyl, steel hardware, and concrete, this large piece is described as “an unlikely crossover between the dry semantics of historical conceptual art and the realm of popular American rural entertainment.”
I enjoyed looking at his work and reading about his conceptual thought for each piece. I have a great admiration for strong conceptual artists and strive to learn from them and their thought processes and writings. Because he also does performance work, I found it interesting to study some of that work and get a sense of the concepts in that work compared to the concepts in his install work or video work.
Artist Website
Catharine Clark Gallery Website
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