Clegg & Guttmann

The artist duo Clegg & Guttmann (both born in 1957) has now been working for thirty years with a notion of art that can be understood as a “social communicative” process, whereby they not only engage with specific urban spaces, but the structure of publicity itself. The term Spontaneous Opera refers to those objects that can primarily be considered events. In contrast to this, the term Social Sculpture subsumes objects in a broader sense. A third classification of their projects is their categorization as Community Portraits; here they are considered intentional actions, where at issue is representation. These three terms do not stand for essential qualities of the work itself, but for the various postures of their producers or receivers. Some Clegg and Guttmann projects are recontexualizations of others, in one of the many meanings of this term. Site and mode of presentation place their work in a discursive art context that distinguishes it from purely social intervention and locates them on the dividing line between social-political action and artistic sculpture. 

Their most important works in public space were Die offene Bibliothek in Graz (1991), Breaking Down the Boundaries between Art and Life, the New School for Social Research, New York (1995), Die sieben Brücken von Königsberg, Duisburg (1999), A Monument for Historical Change, Rosa Luxemburg Platz e.V., Berlin (2004) and the Sieben Künste von Pritzwalk, Potsdam (2014). Their works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, most recently at MUMOK Vienna and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2010), Kunsthaus Graz (2011),  BAWAG Contemporary Vienna (2012) and Kunstverein Brandenburg (2015). In addition, their works can also be found in numerous international collections.