'General Ideas: Rethinking Conceptual Art 1987-2005'

Through Nov. 13, Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts

CONCEPTUAL ART, where the results (if any) are more about the idea than the object, can seem like a closed system in which the artwork is either talking to itself or to the conceptual art that came before it. Vito Acconci, one of the genre's early pioneers, talked about his own work as being "general ideas." If you allow yourself that point of entry, that these works are "general ideas" and they are having conversation with you, then they become a bit more accessible. For the Wattis Institute's exhibit "General Ideas," curator Matthew Higgs has assembled an impressive group of 19 international artists who have picked up the baton from Acconci, Sol LeWitt, Adrian Piper, and many others. I recommend starting on the second floor with Andrea Fraser's six-minute video Little Frank and his Carp, a documentation of the artist's sensuous response to a guided museum tour. We watch Fraser as she follows the directions of the authoritative British male voice-over to a literal extreme. "Contemporary art is big," the voice intones as Fraser walks away from a gigantic marble pillar that she has just "interacted" with in a way that leaves the other museumgoers around her agog. Palestinian-born artist Emily Jacir's series "linz diary" is a double narrative constructed from photos of the artist captured by a surveillance camera trained on a public square in Austria and her accompanying journal entries. Recorded over the course of a month, a public-private story unfolds as both Jacir and the fountain in the square that she becomes so attached to change. For "October 08, 2003," the photo is captioned, "i am with my white umbrella behind the fountain, sick with flu." This detail invites us in into an intimate engagement with her, despite the depersonalized medium of the surveillance camera. Perhaps you think the artists are trying to play a joke on you? Sometimes they are! Enter the back room of the first floor to participate in Martin Creed's Work No. 227 (I won't give away the punch line). Higgs's exhibition essay (be sure to pick up a copy at the gallery) offers a thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of the past and present of conceptual art. Its future, like Jonathan Monk's Meeting #11, which won't take place until Oct. 21, 2009, is yet to be conceived. Tues. and Thurs., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Wed., Fri., and Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m., California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth St., SF. (415) 551-9210. (Katie Kurtz)

E-mail Katie Kurtz at katiejkurtz@gmail.com.