MK Guth: Menu | Cristin Tierney Gallery (NYC)
MK Guth, Dinner to Tell a Joke, 2019. perfect bound book, 6 silver fall zero absorption porcelain cups with holding chips. book: 13 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches.
Language is often described in terms of consumption: to eat one’s words, to digest a passage of text, to devour a novel. In these turns of phrase the body is always present, ready to absorb meaning through the stomach. MK Guth’s exhibition Menu at Cristin Tierney Gallery takes up these themes through a series of handmade instructional books, meticulously crafted objects, and small, illustrative ink drawings. With titles such as Dinner to Tell a Joke, Menu for Getting There, Menu for Getting What You Want, and Dinner for Getting Over It Or At Least Getting Through It, the works run from how-to guides to metaphoric ponderings. One text offers practical advice on what to serve houseguests upon their arrival, another consists of a nonsensical series of knock-knock jokes arranged and bound to look like a tall restaurant menu. One passage from Instructions for Engaging with Clouds offers: “Add some cream to a cup of tea. Study the cloud formation.”
Installation view of MK Guth: Menu. Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York. September 13 - October 26, 2019. Photo by John Muggenborg.
Despite the centrality of written text in the exhibition, Guth’s work is explicitly physical and produced with a high level of craft. Set on unvarnished wooden plinths mounted around the room, the sculptural objects are arranged small groupings, with the books placed in conversation with paintings and everyday-use objects. These juxtapositions also drive much of the humor that permeates the exhibition. Dinner for Getting Over It Or At Least Getting Through It is a bound black book accompanied by a bowl of matches and a small booklet with gold cover text reading “burn me, let go.” Dinner to Tell a Joke offers six shiny red clown-like noses that double as drinking glasses. To access the text within the books viewers must wear bright blue rubber gloves, a precaution that protects the paper but also ensures that the conceptual nature of the pieces remain firmly rooted in the bodily experience.
MK Guth, Dinner for Getting Over It Or At Least Through It, 2019. perfect bound book, ceramic bowl, bound burn pages, matches. book: 14 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches.
Menu is not Guth’s first exploration of communal consumption and social interaction. The artist’s 2012 exhibition, When Nothing Else Subsists Smell and Taste Remain, was built around a series of hosted dinner conversations inside the Art Gym at Marylhurst University. More recently, 2016’s Instructions for Drinking with a Friend invited audience members to spend an hour inside Cristin Tierney Gallery drinking whiskey with a friend while discussing a topic they usually did not talk about. Compared to those two projects, Menu is a much more meditative series. The menus, in particular, are broken up into collections of passages containing a beginning, middle and end—starter, 2nd course, main course, dessert—suggesting a duration of time, though how that time should be spent is ambiguous. In Menu for Getting There, the starter consists of a quote from Mary Oliver, Pablo Picasso, and Marcel Proust. Perhaps Guth has moved on from orchestrating experiences that explore relationships between people to a more intimate conversation between the artist and the viewer. While objects have been the core of Guth’s practice, this exhibition still retains a sense of invitation and performance. The works are not simply instructions or commands: they are offerings, allowing space for viewers to set their own table.
Installation view of MK Guth: Menu, 2019. Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York. Photo by John Muggenborg.
MK Guth’s Menu at Cristin Tierney Gallery ran from September 13 - October 26, 2019. For more on Guth’s work and practice click HERE.
*Images courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery
