Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000

Issues of racial bias, gender, class, politics and aesthetics feature prominently in Fred Wilson’s inquiries into the complex relationship between the art object and the museum. The museum itself is Wilson’s medium and muse: his oeuvre consists of faux museum installations and finely wrought mock art objects that use beauty as a vehicle for helping people to reflect on difficult or upsetting themes. Wilson mimics museum practices—exhibition design and display, lighting, curator’s labels, and wall colors—a process he calls “a trompe l’oeil of curating,” in order to create unexpected and often startling artworks that question the museum’s complicity in perpetuating certain social inequalities. Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000 allowed the viewer to see museum exhibits in a different context, confronting and perhaps changing the viewer’s notion of the museum itself.

Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979-2000 was organized by Maurice Berger for the Center for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county.

This exhibition was made possible with the support of the Friends of the Tang.