After a Year with a Master
Alejandro Cesarco Talks About His Year as a Rolex Protégé
How would you describe the overall time you spent with John Baldessari?
The time spent with John has been friendly and productive. It progressed from a very general getting-to-know-each-other stage to collaborating on a very specific book project and exhibition. John has been extremely generous and giving with his time and knowledge. I’d like to think that we’ve developed a lasting friendship.
Is your approach to art similar to/different from his?
Though the content and formal resolution of our work are clearly dissimilar, I do believe there is a shared inquiry into the foundations of the concept of “art” as it has come to mean: its categories, history, functions, etc. The strategies and methodologies employed represent our personal interests, but at the bottom of it, I think there is this general interest in constantly re-negotiating the limits and functions of art.
Your relationship with him seems to have been friendly, playful and serious. How would you describe it?
Exactly in that way, friendly, playful and serious. John is exceptionally witty, frank and, at least as far as art goes, seems to bear no preconceptions. He is sincerely open and interested, and all this quickly facilitated a sincere relationship.
Could you describe the print series you have created with John Baldessari?
This collaborative project addresses the idea of looking back as a framing device and a narrative mode. Implicit in the project is a concern for the difference created by re-telling and re-presenting the past in the present. The segmentation of history is quite an arbitrary and conventional matter, a story for making the present intelligible. What consequence does this have? Who narrates, and for whom? What is included and what is left out of this narrative? The project in some ways considers the dangers of taking pleasure in the past and the benefits of remembering in order to reinvent.