The commercial form of gallery which we know today has existed for more than 100 years. From the very beginning, the objective has been to present art to a patrician audience with great purchasing power in an environment which is a mixture between that same audience's drawing rooms and the exhibition rooms of a museum. Since then, both art and its audience have changed radically – without the gallery business having taken the consequences hereof. The attempts made, especially in the sixties and the seventies, to change the form of the gallery were all put down in the beginning – and the new galleries shooting up today are all quite traditional regarding their form.

The galleries have thus somehow failed both the art and its audience. The result being that many artists have had to find alternative ways of exhibiting their products – for example through museums and other institutions, the production halls of industrial plants, railway stations, condemned houses, gravel pits, etc. – with the obvious disadvantage of hereby giving up the professional promotion and communication. Either that or the artist has been forced to adapt his or her art to the existing gallery form – with an even bigger disadvantage in terms of the artistic compromise.

Stalke Out Of Space is a consequent attempt to comply with this new state of the art and to take into account its requirements for both untraditional exhibition rooms and professional promotion: Rather than art having to adapt to gallery presentation, the galleries have been closed in order to focus attention on providing the individual artist with the optimal exhibition conditions for his or her particular art. The gallery owner has instead become a promoter to a group of artists.

As the first manifestation of this changed gallery concept, Stalke Out Of Space took part in the Stockholm Art Fair in March 1991 with an "installation" by the artists from Baghuset (the Back Building) – which in the context of an art fair, an installation is a highly unusual and remarkable project.

CHUCK COLLINGS is project number 2 for Stalke Out Of Space. His latest work, made in plywood, has been created in The Danish National Workshops for Arts and Crafts, and has been influenced by the environment and the atmosphere there, by the Danish craftsman's tradition and by the history and the function of the place, and his intention has therefore been to present his work in that environment. This has become possible through cooperation between Stalke Out Of Space and the National Workshops for Art and Crafts.

The production of CHUCK COLLINGS contains several paradoxes as his works of art are both simple as objects and at the same time complex as art: Minimalistic and conceptual but at the same time reactive towards the minimalistic pursuit of the object as anonymous form and the pure concept character of conceptual art. The poetry, the soul, and the responsibility must remain – or return – as an integral part of the object.

As the Minimalists, CHUCK COLLINGS also searches for "back to basics." However, to him the "object" constitutes the starting point for theoretical and philosophical reflections which lift it up from anonymity and unifies it with the "idea" expressed in the title of the work or series. In this unification, the work of art arises as a visual language.

Review

"It has to be deliberate..."

Minimalism in Gammel Dok Warehouse

Stalke is the name of a Vesterbro gallery that has closed itself down. As a gallery, gentlemen.

Instead, the owner Sam Jedig has started a proper art dealership with one hand and, with the other, a new surrounding gallery called 'Stalke Out of Space'.

The idea is to show art wherever there is space and to argue for showing precisely this art. For example, the American artist Chuck Collings, who is now moving into Gammel Dok Warehouse in Strandgade with his minimalist works.

According to Jedig, Collings' works are tailored exactly to the large warehouse, its environment, and atmosphere. What the atmosphere might smell of tar and shipping or of structural weight and solidity. Your choice.

The exhibition has been created in collaboration with the State Workshops for Art and Craftsmanship.

Like other minimalists, Chuck Collings also seeks the delightful mirage 'Back to Basic'—but for him, the exhibited objects become a starting point for theoretical and philosophical considerations that elevate the work from anonymity. In this way, the individual work still forms a valid visual expression. — If this sounds deliberate, it is surely meant as such. That is minimalism. Just ask the youngest and most highly regarded art historians.

Or look over Collings' shoulder.

Ole Lindbo

Politiken 3.5.1991