A Talk – “Tres amigos y la musica” Alexander Alberro, Dan Graham, and Nicolás Guagnini

About

I am delighted to announce this talk on the occasion of Nicolás Guagnini’s show “The Walrus” at 3A Gallery.

“ I am he as you are he as you are me / And we are all together ”

What a peculiar poem. To me, it’s too optimistic that say “And we are all together,” very utopia; I don’t like the idea “utopia.” I don’t believe it. 

However, being in a band would be everybody’s dream, don’t you think? 
Musical audiences understood musicians more than their parents. 
Audiences listen to the music, then deeply think about the lyrics, and they are emotional about it. 
Audiences see that the musician as an icon. 
I don’t need to say anything more because of Dan Graham’s “Rock My Religion” explained everything. 
But, we still need to discuss bands, and music because out understanding never stops, and we are all involved in the culture and the society; we are still alive. 

I’m glad to have this occasion the talk of these three amazing people, each having completely different positions and of different origin. 
Canadian, American, and Argentina will talk about it. It’s very New York, which is a melting pot. They are friends. 

Mieko Meguro
April 2018

Alexander Alberro, Virginia Wright Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Barnard, is the author of Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth Century Latin American Art (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity (MIT Press 2004). He has published in a broad array of journals and exhibition catalogues, and edited a large number of books on contemporary art, most recently Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke (MIT Press, 2016).

Dan Graham lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing (2017); Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2017); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2016); ETH Zurich, Zurich (2015); Greene Naftali, New York (2014); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014); Le Consortium, Dijon (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2009); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2009); and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2009).
His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MOCA | The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Rennie Collection at Wing Sang, Vancouver; Tate Collection, London; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Generali Foundation, Vienna; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21), Vienna; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Friedrich Christian Flick Collection at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Centre Pompidou – Musée national d’art modern, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Nicolás Guagnini was born in 1966 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has lived and worked in New York since 1998. Recent exhibitions include Nicolás Guagnini , Lars Friedrich, Berlin, Germany; Bibelots,  Bortolami, New York, NY; Our Lady of the Flowers , Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany; Union Gaucha Productions , with Karin Schneider, Artists Space, New York, NY; Nicolás Guagnini / Leigh Ledare , Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany; Ana and Carl and some other couples , with Leigh Ledare, Andrew Roth Gallery, New York, NY; Heads , Lars Freidrich Gallery, Berlin; Nicolás Guagnini: Seven , Miguel Abreu Gallery and Balice Hertling & Lewis, New York; The Panel Discussion, The Tennis Match, and A Bodegon , Andrew Roth, New York; and The Middle Class Goes to Heaven , Orchard, New York.
Recent group exhibitions include Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989-2017 , Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; G2 #6: New Acquisitions Hildebrand Collection , G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig, Germany; Bread and Roses,  Museum of Modern Art, Curated by Lukacs Rondunda and Natalia Sielewicz, Warsaw, Poland; Bad Conscience , Metro Pictures, New York.