RAIVO PUUSEMP
DISSOLUTION
UTAH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
JUNE 14 - SEPTEMBER 7, 2013
In 1975, Raivo Puusemp was elected as Mayor of the troubled town of Rosendale, New York. What the residents did not know, and what his campaign did not reveal, was that Puusemp was a conceptual artist who would later come to view his appointment and the situation as an artwork known as Rosendale, a public work. During his tenure, he applied the work he had been doing as an artist, in group dynamic and predictive behavior, to the political problems of the town and was successful in guiding them to a resolution – the dissolution of Rosendale.
Puusemp documented this process through a series of official letters, documents and press clippings, from which a booklet was later published. Following the dissolution of the town, Puusemp resigned his post, relocating to Utah with his family. He removed himself from the art context and from his practice as an artist.
The exhibition is organized by Krist Gruijthuijsen (NL), director of the Grazer Kunstverein, and has shown at the Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria) and the Project Arts Centre (Dublin, Ireland). The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, US) will be the exhibition’s final stop where the last remaining piece created by Puusemp lives as a part of the Salt Lake Art Center collection.
