In the spring of 1978, a man walked into the lobby of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and did something unusual. Dressed entirely in black — rare at the time — he stationed himself on a small, spotlit platform in a corner of the room, then proceeded to gently, almost imperceptibly, kiss the air. This occurred precisely at noon, after which he departed as silently as he had arrived. This quiet ritual, lasting only a few seconds, was repeated for the next six days.
The man was James Lee Byars, a noted conceptual artist and self-described mystic whose performance — titled The Perfect Kiss — had been commissioned by BAMPFA, then called the University Art Museum. Although Byars was primarily based in New Mexico, his work was a perfect match for the Bay Area art world of the 1970s, which had become a bastion of conceptual, experimental and performance art. BAMPFA itself has long been a nexus for these creative currents and now the museum is showcasing them with a yearlong exhibition, To Exalt the Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection.
Drawn from BAMPFA’s permanent collection, To Exalt the Ephemeral focuses on a strength of the museum’s holdings: artworks that embrace experimentation and convey ideas of impermanence, be it materially or thematically. The exhibition will explore this topic across more than 100 works from BAMPFA’s collection, ranging from performance art documentation (including The Perfect Kiss); 18th-century Buddhist scroll paintings; contemporary film and video installations; and Conceptual works that portray transience, ephemerality or decay.
Even before Byars dropped by to kiss the lobby air, BAMPFA was already known for ephemeral art. The museum was founded in 1970, when the counterculture had already begun to reshape the Bay Area’s art scene. The Conceptual art movement of the postwar era had taken root on the West Coast during the 1960s, championing unconventional artistic practices and materials. Around this same time, the Bay Area saw an explosion of avant-garde cinema, with filmmakers experimenting with the physical medium of film stock as a moving canvas for their artistic visions.
BAMPFA’s founding director Peter Selz had the foresight to welcome these creative energies into the museum, not just within the exhibition galleries but throughout the building — and occasionally outside of it. A decade before Byars executed The Perfect Kiss in the lobby, the conceptual artist Hans Haacke presented a performance art piece entitled Skyline. He released a fleet of large white balloons on the UC Berkeley campus, a few steps from the nascent art museum. It was captured in a six-minute movie that was among the first acquisitions of the Pacific Film Archive, and is on view in To Exalt the Ephemeral.
Also part of BAMPFA’s holdings are the archives of Ant Farm, a Bay Area art collective founded in 1968 by a group of young architects rebelling against the fixed parameters of their field. Embracing ideas of impermanence, Ant Farm constructed a series of giant inflatable structures that could be easily modified or transported. To Exalt the Ephemeral contains a video of one such project, a 50-by-50-foot “pillow” constructed in the Mojave Desert and captured on film by the counterculture visionary Stewart Brand.
In addition to the work of Ant Farm, BAMPFA also holds the complete archives of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a Korean American artist whose prolific career was cut short by her untimely death at age 31. Before her passing, Cha distinguished herself as a celebrated artist, poet and filmmaker, who took a special interest in language and text-based art.
Cha’s work will also be featured in To Exalt the Ephemeral, highlighting BAMPFA’s long standing connection to this important artist — who worked at the museum while she was a UC Berkeley undergraduate.
One gallery of the exhibition will be dedicated to a multimedia installation by Joan Jonas, an acclaimed video and performance artist, whose first retrospective exhibition was held at BAMPFA in 1980. Jonas’ contribution to To Exalt the Ephemeral (titled The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things from 2004-05), takes its inspiration from art historical texts, poetry, and the landscape of the American Southwest. Presented through paintings, video, sound, and sculptural props, the installation brings together the atmospheric and sensory experiences of the desert landscape in Jonas’ signature playful style.
This exhibition was co-curated by nine staff members, an unusually collaborative approach, which was the brainchild of Margot Norton. She joined BAMPFA last year as chief curator following a 12-year tenure at the New Museum in New York City.
“As questions around collecting and sustainability have grown more urgent in the art world in recent years, To Exalt the Ephemeral provides a platform for audiences to consider how museums care for artworks in their ‘permanent’ collections that are non-object based or ephemeral by design,” said Norton.
