John Baldessari
John Baldessari, Thirteen Colourful Inside Jobs, 2013
Re-performed for Kaldor Public Art Project 27: 13 Rooms, curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist, at Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay, Sydney, 11-21 April 2013
John Baldessari
born 1931 in National City, California, US
died 2020 in Los Angeles, US
Thirteen Colourful Inside Jobs, 2013
One of the most influential artists of the last 50 years, John Baldessari was integral to both the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and to appropriation art. With an interest in exploring the language of visual culture and the relationship between image and text, some of Baldessari’s works from the 1970s and 1980s deconstruct cinematic language while others playfully reference the genres of performance art and minimalist art through the use of repetitive gestures with an absurdist edge.
Baldessari’s video performance Six Colourful Inside Jobs, 1977, was reimagined as Thirteen Colourful Inside Jobs for 13 Rooms, 2013. For the duration of the exhibition a painter continuously repainted the walls of a single room, carefully following the artist’s instructions.
Baldessari won the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and presented the major retrospective Pure Beauty at London’s Tate Modern the same year. In 2011 Baldessari created Kaldor Public Art Project 23: Your Name in Lights.