Paul Druecke

Paul Druecke (born 1964) is an American artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since 1995 Druecke has been creating and exhibiting projects that deal with public space, social interaction, and personal identity. His projects take the form of public events, exhibitions, multi-media works, and books; the projects invite participation and blur traditional notions of authorship. His work is best understood within the context of conceptual art.

Druecke’s work is influenced by a variety of sources including Happenings, Bernd and Hilla Becher’s taxonomic photography, and the socially focused work of Rirkrit Tiravanija, Temporary Services, and Harrell Fletcher. True to his middle-class, Midwestern upbringing, Druecke’s work adopts a subtle yet persistent irreverence toward power, politics, and elitism.

The salient parallels between Druecke’s work and general socio-political life are hinted at in a 2007 artist’s text for the ongoing project, "A Public Space". As Druecke writes, “Structurally, the project approximates—on a micro-level—the larger contingencies of real-world politics and social validation. As in the voting booth, participants make their contribution while simultaneously being subsumed into the larger societal pool.” [Paul Druecke, “It's My Public Space,” "interReview Journal" 07 (2007), [http://www.interreview.org] .]

Work

Druecke is best known for "A Social Event Archive", the project he originated and ran from 1997 to 2007. The Archive focuses on vernacular photography, gathering together 700-plus snapshots which, according to the official submission guidelines, “document a social occasion, public or private, and may be current or historical.” [“Submission Guidelines,” "A Social Event Archive", [http://www.asocialevent.com/html/info-history.html] .] As in many of his projects, Druecke neither takes the photographs himself nor curates them. On the contrary, photographs are chosen by the contributors who submit them and are archived in the order of receipt. Contributors may submit only one photo, which will not be returned; it can be color or black and white, and up to 4 x 6” in size. Sections of the Archive have been presented in traveling exhibitions, limited edition books, and, since 2002, on the project website. In most cases, these selections have been made by outside curators invited by Druecke.

The diverse range of entries in the archive may be seen to reflect the ubiquitous nature of the personal snapshot. Certainly their multiplicity is due as well to the fact that Druecke accepts contributors’ own ideas about what constitutes a social occasion. David Robbins, who describes the Archive as “a People’s Photography,” comments that the pictures reveal “the theatricalizing influence of cameras upon the human community.” [David Robbins, “Party Platform,” in "A Social Event Archive", Volume 3, Milwaukee: Art Street Windows, 2000, n.p.]

Druecke has used the camera to related democratic effect in other projects, including "Between Sleep and Awake", 2002-03, and "A Public Space: Daley Plaza", 2003-06. For "Between Sleep and Awake", Druecke asked twenty-five people to take a picture of themselves upon awaking. He installed a camera by each participant’s bedside, complete with a shutter release to be snapped the moment the subject woke up. The self-portraits were exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, in 2004. Contributing photographers were also key to the production of "A Public Space: Daley Plaza", but here individuals from a range of professions were asked not to take portraits of themselves but rather of a well-known public plaza in Chicago. The resulting images were exhibited together, providing an unexpectedly heterogeneous picture of a familiar place. "A Public Space: Daley Plaza" is the second of five installments in the project "A Public Space". Each version takes place in a different city; the first, "A Public Space: Main Street Square", was exhibited at Project Row Houses, Houston, in 2005.

Public space itself is an important theme in Druecke’s oeuvre. In "Bright Sun Partial Shade", 2005, he commissioned an artwork by Scott Wolniak for desolate Market Square Park in Houston. Unlike most public art, this one was unsolicited by the city; it was thus as much generous offering as illegal littering, a fact played on by the work itself, a weed-like sculpture which Wolniak fashioned out of trash. Druecke nevertheless invoked the kind of pomp and circumstance called for when a new public work is unveiled: he issued a press release, invited important officials, and held an unveiling ceremony. The ensuing controversy was written about in the "Houston Chronicle" and the "Houston Press". [Jennifer Mathieu, “A Weed Grows in Market Square,” "Houston Chronicle" (June 4, 2005); Kelly Klassmeyer, "The Little Weed that Could," "Houston Press" (September 1, 2005).]

Druecke has invoked the festive trappings of public ceremony on other occasions as well, each time with the intention of drawing attention to a forgotten or misshapen part of the urban fabric and the communal-political interests at stake. Previous celebrations include the 2005 christening party for the Community Courtyard, an underused area adjacent to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, which featured a commemorative T-shirt, and the 2000 christening party for "Blue Dress Park", a forlorn and mysteriously fenced section of otherwise useless concrete in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Druecke re-imagined this unused space and for one night, with the help of dozens of formally dressed revelers and a couple of violinists, it became not an ignored space but a real public place.

References

External links

* [http://www.asocialevent.com/ Paul Druecke's official artist website, also the home of A Social Event Archive]