Don’t Miss: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fear Eats the Soul

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s latest exhibition at Gavin Brown enterprise ostensibly looks little like a gallery show. Tiravanija has removed the windows and doors from the building and spray-painted the otherwise bare walls with the show’s title, taken from a 1974 Fassbinder film: Fear Eats the Soul. In the vast gallery space, the artist has constructed two plywood structures. One hosts a makeshift print shop where visitors can purchase T-shirts with slogans such as ““Less Oil More Courage,” “Make a Monkey Out of Clay” (which references Paul Thek’s teaching notes) and “Fear Eats the Soul,” recently toted by Jerry Saltz at the “1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei” peaceful protest on April 17, 2011. The other room is a gallery-within-a-gallery, made to resemble Gavin Brown’s fist gallery complete with the works from Tiravanija’s first show with the gallery in 1994, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Andy Warhol.

The main attraction, though, is the kitchen adjacent to the gallery where the artist serves homemade soup to visitors during gallery hours. It is surprising, but refreshing, for an exhibition to culminate in mouth-watering aromas rather than a press release and guest book. Tiravanija’s kitchen is an antidote to the over-theorized and over-marketed contemporary art scene, which sometimes feels like an aggregation of galas, fairs, and art stars. Visitors eat in pairs or alone, speaking to the artist-chef or lost in their own thoughts. One can safely put away her Moleskine and intuitively enjoy the shared experience of eating. The cultural significance of food is especially on point coming from the Argentine-born, Thailand-raised and New York-based artist. Furthermore, the exhibition is biographical in a sense, a further chapter of his two decades of creating art as culinary happenings. Likewise, the visitor can bring his or her own biography of mealtimes to the table.

Fear Eats the Soul has received some criticism for dismantling the gallery apparatus in the literal sense only – T-shirts sell for $20 a pop and the soup kitchen doesn’t strive to help the truly needy. Furthermore, the joyride incident should make us think critically about catch-phrase terms like Relational Aesthetics. That being said, Tiravanija impressively creates an art interested in unfolding over time as a shared experience. Much like Art Cart’s transformation of a truck into a gallery, Tiravanija breaks the barrier between the inside and outside of the exhibition space. Fear Eats the Soul is extended for an additional week so put your Bourriaud aside, grab a friend and get a bowl of relational soup. Don’t forget to ask for the fried plantains, they’re delicious.

Special thanks to Art Cart NYC™ contributor Sophie Cavoulacos.